Politics Archives - Spartan Christianity

Why Are You Watching The News

Most people watch the news. Why do they do this? In the eye of the rational man, the negative effects far outweigh the benefits. When watching the news many people are deluded to the reality of the world. What is worse is that most people then become entangled with the world and the affairs therein. Their own spirituality becomes deluded because of how attached hey are to earthly events. This is a great evil, and this is an enemy to masculinity.

“No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him”.
2 Timothy 2:4

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!”
Psalm 33:12

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ”
Philippians 3:20

Can you remember being upset at the news last week, last month or last year? You probably can. But can you remember exactly what you were watching that made you upset? Probably not. So what exactly did watching the news profit you? The world did not end. Life went on. Practically nothing has changed in the American Government as far as radical differences. You got upset and perhaps ruined your entire day without acquiring any type of benefit for your character. The morning hour must consist of you becoming primed for the day, not you ruining your day by taking in a negative visual diet first thing in the morning. It’s like eating jellybeans for breakfast. Televised news is a waste of time because it doesn’t reflect reality. News stations aren’t interested in facts, they are interested in viewers.

The main problem is not watching the news, the problem is that most people become entangled with the world when they watch the news.

They become sour and miserly, they complain and act so negative that they repel everyone they are around. This is not the way Christians are going to convert people. If you are carrying around a cloud of anger and negativity fueled by “current events”, then you are not allowed to complain about people not wanting to listen to you talk to them about the gospel. You seem to be no different from them, filled with depression and anger, so why should they listen to you? You are not acting as though you possess the soul-saving gospel.

According to the Justice Bureau Statistic and distilled by the Pew Research Center, violent crime is down 79%, with 29 violent crimes committed out of every 1000 people ages 12 and up in 2017. This is a reduction from 79.8 crimes in the early 90s. The FBI Reports a 49% decrease in violent crime, with 747 violent crimes in the early 90s, and 382.9 crimes in 2017.

Source: Gramlich, John. “5 Facts about crime in the US”. Pew Research Center, Jan 3, 2019

If you let the mainstream news outlets be your source for what is going on in the world, then you would likely believe that crime is going up because that is all that is reported.

This is not the case, America and the world are actually becoming less violent. The news outlets are dying with the development of the internet and podcasting, so news outlets are forced to do anything to keep your attention. They focus solely on crime and the negative aspects of life because they know this is what gathers attention in the modern age. Outrage culture is addictive, people simply enjoy being angry and negative. All the negativity is based on lies and skewed data.

The state of the world is not so important that we should constantly be worried about it. The state of the nation is not as important as the faith, believe it or not. Throughout history, everytime the home-base nation for Christianity fell, Christians just moved somewhere else. In the broadest sense, Christianity went from Rome to England and then to America. If America continues down a path of immorality, it seems as though Africa is the place where Christians will move since Christianity flourishes there. Christianity always survives the collapse of nations. In fact, it is not even scratched.

Mantra

This world is temporary.

Application

Keep your faith as the most important element in your mind. Your faith cannot be touched if you do not allow it to be. You have likely become entangled with the world, as we all have. The modern faith is easy and convenient for most people to maintain, which is why their faith is so weak, it has not been put through the furnace to be strengthened.

We can lie to ourselves about the difficulty of life and faith but the reality is that having faith and living life is easier and more comfortable than it has ever been in history. And we are more entangled with the cares of the world than we ever have been in history. We must reject this.

We cannot purge out every semblance of the world from our life, it is not possible. However, at the very least we must put our faith first, which is more than most Christians do. Remember how many of them read their Bible daily?

Get out a notebook and start making daily disciplines for yourself.

You must read the Bible daily and pray. If you are not doing this you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself serious questions about the quality of your faith. You have the mind of God sitting on your shelf and you aren’t using it.

It is of the utmost importance to go to bed a little later or wake up a little earlier in order to get the Bible reading in. Great men of faith in the Bible prayed three times daily (Daniel 6:10-28). That may be too much to ask of you right now, but it is a goal we all should have. Are you concentrating on the Word every day without fail or are you a loser who just so happens to wear the name of Christ? Today is the day you end your negative practices. Reject the entanglement of the world.

Cut off the news, it is doing you no good.

If you want to know how the world is faring, read actual statistics, do not listen to other people report on what is happening. Read an unbiased international news source reporting on American events. At the very least read both sides of a political argument and search for the facts.

Gather your strength. Focus your mind on the church. Reject worldliness and its accompanying filth. Harden your resolve to obliterate the enemy from your mind. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

American Collapse Will Not Happen in One Day

Rome did not fall apart in a single day. The fall came over time, fueled by decadence and hedonism.

People are panicking about the state of the country. That is fine, the concern may actually be a good thing. But there is much more hope than people realize. There are still thousands of individuals “who have not yet bowed to the Baals”. If American collapse is coming, it will not happen overnight.

We will not wake up one morning to overwhelming tyranny and government regulated living and think, “I wonder how we got into this situation”.

The majority of countries fall apart slowly over time.

They decay slowly instead of combusting spontaneously. This is how Rome fell: slowly over time, instead of overnight in mass hysteria.

Historians have generated hundreds of theories as to why the Roman empire fell. The real reason could be any one of those theories or any possible combinations of various theories. However, the primary point to be noted is that Rome did not fall apart in a single day. The fall came over time, fueled by decadence and hedonism.

The citizens focused on pleasure and the enjoyment of life, causing them to become soft and weak. The empire was only as powerful as its people. The people only as powerful as their minds allowed them to be. The fall happened slowly.

The fact that there is panic about the state of the country actually provides some positive facts.

1 – We the People are Aware of what is going on in the country.

We are aware of the decadence and the destruction of core values that made America a world power. As long as we are aware of the problems, we can stave them off. Destruction and death happen to the people who are unaware of them. Countries are destroyed by apathy and stagnation.

The American people are fully aware of the condition that the country is in and the direction that it is headed. Because of this awareness, there is hope. Awareness is the foundational principle and key to all improvement and change. As long as we are aware of the evil that exists, there is still plenty of time to change it.

There also seems to be a delay in how nations decay when they have solid religious foundations. Many historians are shocked that the Roman empire lasted as long as it did. It could be because of the heavy Christian presence there. Just speculation, something to think about.

When Rome fell, Christianity went elsewhere, finding a home in other European countries.

Britain would become a world power much later in time, and Christianity would find its base there. It seems that whatever the world power is, it is infused with faith. And this faith preserves the nation because the nature of God is merciful.

God would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of 10 people. That is less than 2% of the population of those two cities alone, not counting the other two cities that were destroyed (if historians are correct about the population of Sodom and Gomorrah being around 900-1200 people).

The American country will be spared as long as there is righteousness in it. And as long as we the people are still panicking about the state of the country, then we have enough righteous souls to spare the nation. We are aware enough of the evil to keep it at bay for a few more years. There is hope for the country yet.

Correcting Hypocrisy: Garbage Intake

“There is nothing wrong with watching the news and being politically aware, but when it starts to negatively impact our faith, we need to consider taking a step back.”

Colossians 3:2 – “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

John 15:19 – “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

We have been told for years to be wary about what we put in our minds.

Older Christians have made it a point to tell us this and to tell us to guard our hearts. The information that enters our minds through our senses is going to determine how we think. Our actions are the cumulative effects of our thoughts, therefore we must be very mindful of those thoughts.

The older generations have warned us about the effects of music and other media on our perceptions and thought processes. They have warned us about the fact that we will become like the people we talk to and hang out with. They give us all this valuable information yet they live in hypocrisy.

The older generation sits in front of the television set watching the news constantly. They take in all the outrage media outlets and become extremely emotionally involved with their perception on the world. They do not realize that they are only getting a brief glimpse of the world through the filter of whatever news station they are listening to. Through this they become entangled with the world and depressed about its state. They think the world is coming to an end, just as older people have thought for decades now. They are disillusioned to the state of reality.

Even in all their wisdom, the older people do not realize that they are committing the same evils that they have warned against.

They are allowing the state of the world to affect their faith. There is nothing wrong with watching the news and being politically aware, but when it starts to negatively impact our faith, we need to consider taking a step back.

Remove any impediment to God that exists.

Application

You may find yourself living in hypocrisy. You tell others to avoid putting garbage in their mind because you know it will damage your faith, yet you still put different garbage in your own mind.

Reduce the amount of negative, outrage media that you ingest. The world will keep spinning even if you pay a little less attention to it. If you are too deep in an addiction to outrage (which is why many people watch the news in the first place) then you need to fast from media for a determined period of time. Maybe a week, maybe a month, it depends on how severely you have twisted your mind. You have forgotten that God is in control and nations will rise and fall based on what He has determined to be right.

Remember that everything that will happen is already known in the mind of God. Remember that we know how our story ends, with good as the victor and with all evil eliminated.

Correct your thoughts.

Purge your mind of worldliness.