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AN INTERVIEW WITH GOD
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonlione.org
October 28, 2011
VOL: Dear Lord. Things are rough all over.I don't need to tell you how bad things really are. Can they get any worse, probably, but I would like to ask you a few questions, if you would indulge me.
GOD: Fire away.
VOL: Look, we are losing the culture wars over pansexuality in The Episcopal Church. Heaven knows (if you'll pardon the pun) but many of us have been hammering home your Word on the subject for quite a while now, but we don't seem to be getting anywhere. In short, we're losing.
The Episcopal Church has active homosexual and lesbian laity, priests and bishops and, well, it's a huge mess. TEC is also exporting its culture wars into the Global South. We need help. Throw us a bone here.
GOD: What sort of bone would you like me to throw you exactly?
VOL: You could remove some of these idiots who are destroying YOUR church.
GOD: You mean knock them off...a heart attack here and there, a nasty terminal cancer... that sort of thing.
VOL: Precisely. Out with the old in with the new young orthodox faithful...the real promise keepers.
GOD: And what makes you think that getting rid of the revisionists, as you call them, will automatically mean that the good guys will prevail?
VOL: Can things get any worse...?
GOD: Of course they can. Has it occurred to you that I am letting evil run its course? You yourself publish statistics saying The Episcopal Church won't be around in a quarter of a century. What about the death of a denomination don't you understand?
VOL: Agreed, but in the meantime, a lot of people are getting hurt, tossed out of their parishes, losing jobs, salaries, pensions etc.
GOD: I am aware of all that, even more so than you. I never promised anybody a rose garden. In fact, I said if you follow me, you would have to take up your cross and follow me. My Word is full of words like faithfulness, obedience (even unto death), so what about that don't YOU understand?
VOL: It's a huge price to pay. Every day I get stories coming into my e-mail telling me of the hardships people and priests are facing. It's heart-breaking stuff.
GOD: And you don't think I know this?
VOL: Of course you do. But we are ONLY HUMAN and frankly it sucks.
GOD: Of course pain sucks as you so indelicately put it. And you might clean up your language.
VOL: Sorry, Lord.
GOD: I caught you reading the Book of Hebrews the other day. You read over and over about certain early martyrs of the church who had been "sawn in half" and "suffered unto blood", but you have not so suffered. The only bloodletting I have seen in your life has been under anesthesia surrounded by doctors and nurses who saved your sorry life in rather pristine conditions...
VOL: Got it. So what do we do?
GOD: What I have told Christians of every age and generation to do. Be faithful, stop complaining and get on with the biz. I have laid out my plans for you and my church (and it IS mine not yours). All you are called upon to do is to follow them. Being my disciple means being obedient and to keep fighting the good fight and to press on (with all your might) regardless of what you see on the surface. You don't see the whole picture. I do. You recently wrote that there were more worshipping Christians in China than in all of Europe put together...could you have written THAT five years ago?
VOL: I guess not.
GOD: Look at what I am doing in Africa and Asia and Latin America. Half of Brazil will be evangelical Christians in a decade or so. My word is going forth in Africa in a way that the early missionaries who went there, ministered briefly and then died of Malaria would be ecstatic over. Tens of millions of Africans have discovered my Son in the last decade...in your lifetime. Whole centuries have gone by with very little witness. You are seeing a veritable explosion of the faith around the world. I have put you in the driver's seat to watch and report.
VOL: I hear you.
GOD: Good. Then leave the results to me; they're none of your business. TEC is history, the final chapters are being written. I may even let you live long enough to see it fold. In the meantime I have told you what to do. Do it.
END
