Undying Commitment: A 14-day Study in StewardshipНамуна

Papering Over the Cracks - or Stripping Away the Cover?

The Old Testament prophetic calling seldom brought popularity. Amos delivered a hard-hitting and hugely offensive message so inflammatory that it became a personal liability. He showed Israel the 'plumb line' by which God had measured the nation and found it wanting.

Israel under Jereboam was religious, no doubt; the house of Jeroboam had erected sanctuaries at the 'high places of Isaac,' but the god they were worshiping there wasn't the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Instead, Jereboam and his cronies had constructed a false religion of reverence for the political and religious establishment and for economic and social expediency. The God of the covenant had been replaced with the god of the convenient.

The problem was, the civil religion of Israel, as civil religion so often does, had the look and feel of faith in the Sovereign God, but it's main focus was to keep prosperity rolling along without any interference from a pesky prophet. When Amos called the state religion to account, it was an affront to both 'patriotism' and 'religion' as they were perceived by its adherents. As Amaziah told Amos, in effect, to 'love this country or leave it': 'Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. Don't prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king's sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.' Whose temple? The kingdom's. Not God's.

What does 'civil' religion look like today? Not really so different. Historian of Christianity and society Herbert Schlossberg writes:

When Will Herberg studied what appeared to be a religious revival in the 1950s, he concluded that it often consisted of 'a religiousness without religion, a religiousness with almost any kind of content or note, a way of sociability or ��belonging rather than a way of reorienting life to God. Civil religion is capable of brining some people to the highest level of society's expectations, but is incapable of calling those expectations into judgment!

A religious statement, on the other hand, which says 'do not be conformed to the values of society' swings an axe at the trunk of civil religion. Civil religion eases tensions, where biblical religion creates them. Civil religion papers over the cracks of evil, and biblical religion strips away the covering, exposing the nasty places. Civil religion prescribes aspirin for cancer, and biblical religion insists on the knife!

The bottom line for the Christian stewards is to discern where one's allegiance truly is, with the Triune God or with a false god wrapped in a wavering flag. The Christian steward insists on the knife.