How?

How did we get to this place where our president says his favorite Bible verse is “eye for an eye”? And he openly, repeatedly admits that he hates his enemies. And he is clearly fueled by revenge. 

How did we get to this place where we’re becoming more uncaring towards people with disabilities? 

How did we get to this place where we demean and belittle people of color? How did we become so unashamedly uninterested in their history, their plight? 

How did we get back to this uncivil pretense that native peoples were savages and our coming here introduced them to Christianity and saved them? 

How did we get so cold that we think it’s okay to disdain, mistreat, and mock foreigners? 

And how did we get to a point where our elected officials behave like children and daily call each other derogatory names? 

How did we become callous towards the deaths of children in school shootings? 

How did we become a people that regularly, openly, religiously mock, bully, loathe, and attack  people who are lgbtqia? 

How did we get to a place where we think it’s wrong to care about the struggles and suffering of others? How did we think it was intelligent and not demonic to war against a word such as empathy? How do we go along with heartless banter that suggests sympathy, empathy, compassion = wrong and weak? 

I’ve been casually checking these brutish manifestations off to an endtime prophecy that states the love of many shall wax cold (Matthew 24:12). And thats absolutely accurate. However, it’s an incomplete answer. 

In osteopathic medicine, there is this focus that targets the cause and not just the symptom. So, with that approach let’s look deeper. 

There are consequences. One thing leads to another. Sin leads to negative outcomes. 

Lovelessness is a symptom. Lawlessness is the root that causes, or allows the symptom. 

The complete verse in Matthew 24:12 doesn’t just prophesy a time where love would be waning. Heres the whole verse:

“And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.”

Friends, the breaking, evading, or ignoring of the law is a pervasive exigency. Our cities and streets sometimes suffer from lawlessness. The modern church is sick with lawlessness. Our government and our corporations are increasingly lawless. And the current POTUS models lawlessness. 

Many who claim to want law & order really just want dominance. That’s law without love. That’s an antichrist reality. That’s what you see in dictator regimes. 

Meanwhile, much of the modern church (especially the mega churches) actively, agressively seeks to detach itself from the Old Testament, and the preaching of holiness, righteousness, repentance, sanctification, and the fear of the Lord. This has been a demonic trick to turn the church 100% against law. Of course Jesus is our savior. But Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law. He came to model righteousness. He came to call us to the cross. The cross is where we nail our fleshly desire to live without right and wrong guidelines. It’s where we surrender to a higher way—the narrow way. There is no greater love than that which bleeds from a cross.  For this world, things aren’t likely to change and improve. Our systems, debates, gatherings, efforts can never bring a righteous revolution. But we can choose to be different. We can seek sanctification from this world’s ways. We can follow Jesus. We’re in the last days. I think this is important.