Bad Stewards

During my formative years, I was taught in a very conservative Southern Baptist community that Christ Jesus entrusted His church to conduct His affairs in this world until His glorified return, and that its members were to give/tithe at least 10% of their resources (mainly in the form of money they had been led to believe they had earned) to fund this work. The doctrine is called Stewardship, and I now know that it is incorrect in a number of ways. I will be focusing upon only a couple of them in this piece, though.

First of all, Christ Jesus is not absent from this world. Yes, there will come a day when He will visibly return in all of His most awesome glory to openly rule over this entire world, but in the meantime, He is just as much everywhere, all of the time, in Spiritual form as He ever has been. Secondly, Christ Jesus has always known everything that there will ever be to know about everyone since long before He created this world. Subsequently, there is no entrusting anyone with anything. That is, at least not in the way we naturally think. Yes, He wants His chosen servants to help the lost and confused to get to really know Him by being shining reflections of His goodness and mercy against the darkness of Spiritual ignorance, but that is a far cry from calling Christians to truly seek and to save the lost, which is what far too many have been lad to believe.

Alas, even if it was true that believers are called to be Christ Jesus' hands and feet in His absence, why are so many conservative Protestants screaming the loudest about removing the illegal aliens from America and closing the borders to all but a very select few new immigrants? How can they seriously tell anyone about the love of Christ Jesus after leading the charge against some of the most helpless people in this world?

No, they are not thinking about that. They are just thinking about not sharing the bounty they sincerely believe they have worked hard for with mostly Catholic immigrants, who have illegally entered this country—regardless of their reason being absolute desperation.

Hey, these hard-core conservatives are the kind of people I grew up with, and I am not chunkin' rocks at just Southern Baptists, neither. For there are plenty of Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Pentecostals and even some Catholics involved.

In all fairness, we most definitely need much better border security measures to guard against terrorism, drug trafficking and plain, old-fashioned smuggling, but who I am talking about here are desperate people just wanting to escape abject poverty and no hope of it ever getting any better in their places of birth. No, I do not want people coming in who do not really want to become Americans, but even the vast majority of those pose no threat to our American way of life.

I do not mind some accommodations being made for those not growing up speaking English. For I am all too painfully aware of just how difficult the language can be to master—especially American English, with dozens of words meaning basically the same thing and/or something completely different, depending upon the context and/or correct spelling. For example: John loved going fishing in his Ranger bass boat when he was not out on tour, playing bass with his rock band.

On the other hand, I do not think it is at all unreasonable for those wanting to actually live here to have to have at least a rudimentary grasp of the language to get along well. After all, I cannot imagine moving to France and fully enjoy living there without knowing more than a few words of French.

All of the screaming about illegal aliens taking jobs away from good, tax-paying American citizens is pure nonsense. Do you want a seasonal job harvesting fruit and vegetables? How about working on the line in a chicken plant? Beef or pork processing, then? Oh, I forgot about lawn care and housecleaning. Now, those are jobs that many red-blooded Americans dream about having.

Besides, how can anyone truly in their right-mind refuse to share what they can with the less fortunate? For they know full well that everything they have has been a gift from our Heavenly Father. Even the desire to work hard is a gift from Him.

So, just how many self-proclaimed good Christians truly are in their right-mind? I know now that I was not until our Heavenly Father changed me, which did not happen until 29 years after I went forward to publicly accept salvation and be baptized.

Even if you do not want to believe any of that, did you have a choice of where and when you were physically born into this world? Can you really afford to place all of your bets upon your ability to be successful at this supposed game of life, governed by the law of the jungle?

What comes next? What if it is indeed true that many of those on top in this world will be on the bottom in the next? How can a few, very short years in this world compare with the whole of eternity?

Of course, I could be woefully deceived. What say you?

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