“Now, the Pharisees who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things, and they were scoffing at Him” (Luke 16:14).

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money….” (II Timothy 3:1-2).

We are conditioned from infancy to love money.

In childhood: Family and friends come to the house and they give the kids money. You go into the hospital for a tonsillectomy and people give you money. You go to church and they ask for money. Your dad takes a job in a distant state and the family relocates there, all for money.  A few years later, the business shuts down and dad is jobless and the family moves back South and you say goodbye to your friends, because there is no money.

And later: You go to college and they ask for money. You take a part-time job to make spending money. You are walking along the sidewalk and you find money. You take a job working in a church and to your surprise, they pay you. You go to a larger church and they pay you more, which is a good thing since you now have to buy a house and send kids to school.

And so goes life.

When you are as rich as Donald Trump, the actual money no longer matters.  One can only eat so much food, wear so many clothes, drive so many automobiles, and live in so many houses.  “Money is how you keep score,” Mr. Trump says.

It turns out money is the smoking gun.  The Pharisees who were the Tea Party of their day–and by that we mean the diehard conservatives, the only true traditionalists, they felt–could be almost excused for their opposition to Jesus on the grounds that He was reinterpreting all the scriptures as they understood them.  Except that their motives were not quite that pure. They lived for money, in the same way untold generations before and after have done.

Continue reading →

“…holding to a form of godliness, althought they have denied its power….always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:5,7).

Anyone looking for the smoking gun which will explain this generation’s gradual, casual descent into despair and darkness need look no further.

In Second Timothy chapter 3, the Apostle Paul, facing a second trial before Caesar which would end in his beheading, is alerting God’s people to the dangers awaiting them. He says, “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, althought they have denied its power, and avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

And that’s just the church people! (see note at the end)

Two things in particular stand out about this generation–if indeed we apply the term “the last days” to our own generation–and qualify as “the smoking gun,” referred to above.

Continue reading →