ctmi concerned parents

Very recently, I had the opportunity to reread the four Gospels in quick succession. A number of things caught my attention. But the one constant across all four books are the attacks that were aimed at Jesus by the religious authorities.

Literally from his first miracle, they got to work on accusing, undermining, judging, and even denying the reality of Almighty God at work in the lives of His people. It really is quite scary to see how a few people with vested interests will, in the end, stop at nothing when they are shown up for who they are. Pride and self-righteousness, bluster and indignation, anger and arrogance, hypocrisy are often described as being the ‘refuge of scoundrels’; and, it seems there is little difference between these religious leaders of the time of Jesus and those, who, today, appear to be willing to stop at nothing, just to be proven right.

You may well ask yourself why I, as a concerned parent, should be raising such a point on this forum. The answer is quite simple. When I became a Christian, my children were still very young. I discovered that by quoting verses of Scripture, I could bring them to obedience in a way that shouting or spanking could never do. I suddenly acquired an authority that was much higher than me, and the kids went against it at a risk of ‘displeasing God’. It goes without saying that I could not see my manipulative, legalistic and carnal authority at work in all this. After all, how could mere children dispute that, in the eyes of the Lord, they were committing some type of sin or other.

I praise God that, by His Amazing Grace, He opened my eyes – I dare to say: ‘He has given me a revelation’; that I was bringing up my children with the heart of a Pharisee. I was protecting my own pride, justifying my self-righteousness, and simply putting a burden on my children that even caused them to rebel later on. By His grace, He called them back to His flock, and today, we are serving the Lord and walking in His ways once again as a family.

As I read through the Scriptures, I saw how a few men who would stop at nothing, wanted to believe until the very end that it was better for someone to die, than for them to change their ways. So deceived and blinded were they by their knowledge of God’s laws and their self-righteousness – they could quote scripture about every possible issue – that they forgot to see God’s heart for the sinner, for the sick, for the poor. It stands to reason, therefore, that these very attributes in our Lord would cause them to insist that one could not work on the Sabbath, even if it meant healing someone. Despite being sinners themselves, they were ready and willing to stone the woman caught in adultery. They even desperately tried to prove that the man born blind could not be the same one who could now see.

What all this says is that today, 2000 years after Jesus, there are still religious people in His Church, who will stop at nothing to destroy the work of the Lord, no matter the cost. The hardness of their hearts has meant that they will believe and perpetuate every untruth, every lie, every biased testimony, just as long as it ties up, and fits in, with their position. It is sad indeed that, in their supposed ‘concern’, they cannot see just how far they have strayed from the heart of God for His Church.  In fact, all this striving has only succeeded to force other Godly men and women and institutions to stand with CTMI.

I believe that anyone reading the Gospels, even in a superficial manner, will not fail to see that Jesus reserved most of his anger, frustration, and despair for this group whose hearts were simply closed to what God was doing. I am always amazed at the lengths supposedly zealous ‘Christians’ are willing to go to ‘defend’ God. There are even people willing to commit crimes and atrocities in the name of God! Can this truly be the heart of God? Is what this ‘concerned parents group’ doing really what God would want them to devote their time, energies, and service to? Would Jesus have aligned Himself with the godless of the world in order to prove that He was in the right?