“Mine Ebenezer”

Methought I heard a voice
cry, "Sleep no more!

McChurch does murder sleep!" the
innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of
care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of
hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in
life's feast.

Methought I heard a voice
cry, "Sleep no more!
McChurch does murder sleep!" the
innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of
care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of
hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in
life's feast.

Following
my recent broadside at the Obama juggernaut, I received a gracious response
from Joshua DuBois, religious policy advisor to Sen. Obama. Josh's
signature line stuck with a force that has kept me off balance ever
since: "O to grace, how great a debtor…"

The
next Sunday, on my list of hymns was "Come Thou Fount of Every
Blessing." For the first time in memory, I was asked, "What does
Ebenezer mean?" My flippant reply was that the song was written by
Charles Dickens. The answer came
in the next Sunday's sermon, "Here I Raise Mine Ebenezer."

For
twenty years, the Ark of the Covenant had been in storage. The
terrorist Philistines were invading Israel. The Jewish people were
distraught. They appealed to the Prophet Samuel. His answer to them
was that the presence of God rested on two conditions – "Repent
and abandon your idols."

After
the rout of the Philistines, Samuel erected a monument that he dubbed
"Ebenezer" (or rather that the translators of the Hebrew distorted into
"Ebenezer"), Stone of Help,
"For the Lord has helped us thus far." The phrase "thus far"
is the key to getting the point.

McChurch, the drive-through, fast-food temple of the
Christian Right, rests its hopes on the first condition – "Repent,"
carried out by repeating the so-called Sinner's Prayer, with or
without conviction. The second condition, "Abandon your idols,"
is vigorously opposed. In fact, if one is faithful enough, you can
add to the number of your other gods.

Examples of other gods include, the Prosperity Gospel,
Dr. Dobson, the Bible (in contrast to the Word of God), Right to Life
(as distinguished from dignity), money, power, revenge, heterosexual
marriage, pride, to name a few. What would prick the secular
conscience now morphs into license.

If the Prophet Samuel was right, however, the argument
that Evangelicals must "restore the soul of America" is
especially moot. It is moot because it is based on the tenuous
principle that America was founded as a Christian nation. The words
of Samuel are reserved for such entities.

There is no indication
that either the confessing church or America is about to abandon its
idols, a precondition to restoring the presence of God.

How did we get this far afield? We got here by
forgetting that grace creates great debtors – not warriors or
conquerors. The debtor is busy identifying and trashing his idols.

"The
person who dies with the most idols wins!"

Stan Moody,
Christian Policy Institute, author of McChurched:
300 Million Served and Still Hungry.