In the ordinary course of things, I wouldn't even be reading a Knox column. It's not that I have anything against him personally, but he just seems to live in a different world than I do. But the title on this piece was just so over-the-top ridiculous that I had to click and see why on earth GM would give a rip what Christians thought over what its union employees thought (some of whom I presume are Christians). Anyway, the article was off-the-wall enough that I did something I rarely do: wrote a response. It was never published (which I didn't expect), nor was I even acknowledged (which I did expect). Obviously, Knox Knows All and isn't interested in the views of a peon like myself even to the extent to send an automated reply acknowledging that I took the time to engage in his article. Anyway, the great thing about the internet is even though Knox didn't think my response to be worthy his time, I can still inflict it on other helpless victims.
GM isn't talking to Christians, because GM has no reason to care what Christians think. This isn't because GM has been taken over by godless humanists trying to push Christians out of the mainstream. It is because for the last 150 years, Christians in the US have taken every conceivable step to make themselves irrelevant in our society by surrendering one area of influence after another to the government.
Schools:
Nearly every Christian agrees that our schools are trying to indoctrinate our children in beliefs contrary to what we as parents want them to learn. Unfortunately, it was Protestant Christians who decided to use compulsory government education to indoctrinate Catholic children in Protestantism. Many warned at the time that the system would eventually turn on its creators, but to no effect. It did, and the response of the Christian community was to ignore the problem until it was far too late, then walk away.
Marriage:
Who's bright idea was it to have the government license marriage? Who's bright idea was it to require a minister to obtain a government license to be able to perform weddings? What possible reason could there have been for the Church to surrender marriage, the foundation of Godly society, to the government? I'll give you a hint: it's the same people who created our godless public education system. Once again, the Church pretended everything was fine until too late. Now, no one can understand why the Church feels it should have a say in the debate on homosexual marriage because there are precious few left alive that remember that the Church once defined marriage. You can't abandon something on the side of the road, then complain about how someone else uses it.
Welfare/Medicaid
The Old and New Testaments both repeatedly state who is to care for the poor. It isn't the government. The job fell to the government when Christians in western society became more concerned with using what God had entrusted to them for their own glory rather than His. The government did what all governments do; create a bureaucracy that feeds itself and allows the poor to eat the crumbs from its table. The Church quotes verses like Proverbs 6:6-11 and pretends it didn't create the problem.
Social Security/Medicare:
From the Ten Commandments to Paul's epistles, who is charged with financially supporting my parents? Again, it isn't the government. Now our entire nation, and every nation that imitated us, faces a total financial meltdown as first Medicare, then Social Security begin eating us alive. Meanwhile, the Church sits on the sidelines, silent.
There is a wall that separates the Church from the rest of society, but it wasn't put there by its enemies. It was built brick by brick by the people inside the Church itself. Now Christians find themselves surrounded by this wall, shouting in vain trying to get those outside to listen, without a clue that those outside do not know or care what they are saying. I know this intimately because I have watched it happen first-hand as a deacon and leader of the youth ministries in my local church.
Is the situation hopeless? Certainly not, but the remedy will not be quick and will require Christians of every stripe to actively engage in society. Here are a few specific things you can do right now that won't cost you anything except some of your time:
Instead of watching Rush Limbaugh, use the time to read and study the Bible. Start in the gospels and pay particular attention to how and to whom Jesus did ministry. He went to where the people were, even if it meant entering Samaria, rather than sitting in the temple and waiting for the crowds to show up. He didn't spend a lot of time preaching to "religious" people; He spent most of His time with prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, and the like. Who are the lepers in your community that your church shuns? Where is the Samaria in your town that no one in your church would be caught dead in?
Instead of spending two hours every day listening to talk radio (the converted preaching to the converted) grab a couple cold bottles of water and head across the street. If you're like 90% of the Christians I know, you have lived across from the same people for 10 years and don't even know their names. Introduce yourself, offer a water, and have a conversation. Don't beat him over the head with your KJV Bible or stuff his mailbox with literature telling him he will burn in hell forever. Instead, engage him and live Christ's love in front of him.
The next time you feel moved to write a letter to your congress critter about how all those lazy welfare people need to get a job or starve, use the time instead to volunteer at a local shelter. Find out first hand what it really means to be flat broke in the middle of a society that uses wealth as the only measure of self-worth. If the experience doesn't move you to tears, beg God to forgive you and break the callous around your soul.
The next time you feel the need to vent about what the kids in your local school wear or how they talk or what music they listen to, don't waste your time at the next school board meeting. Find the teens in your church (you may have to search a bit; most churches hide them well out of sight) and offer to help them set up a student-led Bible study. If the school refuses to allow it on-campus, offer to open your home. I'm with teens most of the time; they don't bite, are mostly housebroken, and, amazingly, they're just people like you and me, trying to find answers in a world that treats them like interchangeable economic units whose only purpose is to consume ever greater quantities of stuff. A little unconditional love can literally work miracles.
If every person in the Church did just these four simple things, I wouldn't have to contact GM (how exactly does one contact a non-existent entity anyway?) to let them know how I feel. The men and women who own and operate the company would already know.
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