Bishops and Priests: Follow Christ Yourselves, Then You can Lead Us.

Bishops and Priests: Follow Christ Yourselves, Then You can Lead Us. December 21, 2022

Albert Edelfeldt: Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Woe to you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.

Jesus Christ

Christian clergy, by ignoring the Gospels and the Ten Commandments, have turned large swaths of American christianity into an amoral, corrupt, vicious arm of the Neo Nazi right wing. They have supported just about every evil that Scripture condemns and attacked many political expressions of the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. 

They attack the poor, disabled, imprisoned and anyone without power on behalf of avarice and corruption. They don’t just walk past Lazarus. They condemn him, attack him, and support those who would stomp him into dust. 

Pity the female half of the human race who appeals to these clergy for mercy. Mercy is not in them. And neither is the Holy Spirit. 

But, as always, a remnant remains. There are Christians who see the abject corruption of so many of our clergy and are appalled by it. These people love Jesus, but they are on their own so far as human leadership or even fellowship is concerned. 

I know many people who have either left the Church or are hanging on to it while suffering the extremes of alienation and isolation inside it, all because they are not deluded into following the false and idolatrous political gospel that their bishops and priests are pushing. The internet is both a source of attack against these people and the only source of Christian community they may have. 

They band together in on-line groups, and they are also attacked, sometimes personally, by right wing rabble and internet priests and preachers. It’s a lonely world for people with stubborn minds who will not knowingly chose to believe lies in order to fit in with their groups.

I am writing this for a simple reason. I want to appeal to those bishops and priests who are willing to hear it to use these last days of Advent for their own personal conversion away from false political gods and back to Jesus. I am appealing to you, my clergy, to follow Christ, preach Christ and be shepherds to your flocks. 

You have the solution for what ails us, and it is not found in the ballot box or in changing the laws of the land. It is — and it always has been — bringing people to Christ. 

You are not called to change the laws. You are called to be a conduit of God’s grace and mercy. You are called to lead people on the Way that leads to eternal life. 

The Way has nothing to do with politics. Read the Gospels. Read the words of Christ. Jesus was as clear about this as He could possibly be. 

He did not come to establish a government. His Kingdom is not a political Kingdom. 

A small group of fascist billionaires are using you as a club to beat the people of Christ into following false political gods of their devising. This group of billionaires has one purpose, and that is to siphon the wealth of this nation into their own pockets. They are impoverishing millions with their greed, and you and your corrupted and false teachings are helping them do it. 

That is what you are accomplishing with your sell-out to the powers of this world. 

Meanwhile, great numbers of people are either leaving the Church in an absolute way, or they are leaving it while staying in place by their growing alienation and resistance to taking its teachings seriously. You are losing your teaching authority because you have abused it with false political teachings. 

You are driving people away from Christ, either by leading them to follow a false political god instead of Jesus, or by repulsing them so thoroughly with your hypocrisy that they decide He is as phony as you are. 

Advent is a time of conversion. In these times of constant craziness and vapid hate, when evil stings and bites at people without pausing, we all need conversion. Every one of us.

The truth — The Truth — is that God will help us through this. All anyone ever has to do is ask. I know this. I know it. Because I have lived it. 

Corrie Ten Boom said “There is no pit so deep that He is not there.” She knew this because she had lived it. 

My dear bishops and priests, your failures are right in front of you. It is statistically proven in the mass apostasy that is taking place now, as I type this. 

You don’t need just to preach Christ. You need to believe in Him yourself. 

You don’t need just to seek to convert. You need conversion yourself. 

You are leading people into idolatry because you have fallen into idolatry yourself. 

If you would follow Jesus, you bishops must stop taking right wing money. Stop seeking government money. Stop being bribed. Stop being corrupt. 

Live and govern your diocese on what the people of God give you. 

You cannot lead where you will not go. Follow Christ yourselves. Then, you will be able to lead those of us in the pews in the Way that leads to eternal life. 

Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He then said to Simon Peter a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”

John 21: 15-19


Browse Our Archives