Thought Crimes

In the challenging days ahead, pastors and priests will have more and more opportunities to chose Love or Fear. That is, to base decisions and actions on love – or on imagined and sometimes intensifying fears, which magnify and become the narrative, when not spiritually dealt with and speedily confessed….

“As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man.” In the days of Noah, the imaginations of men were evil continuously.

Evil imaginations include those based on fear. Well-meaning clerical controls – often in direct opposition to the will of the Holy Spirit – kick in and wrongly control others, who then lose their spiritual freedoms because undisciplined pastors (undisciplined in this area) need to see more security in themselves than spiritual freedom in others. This is a conforming to the spirit of the age.

Many of us remember when we first encountered the words, “It is not Love and Hate that are opposites. But Love and Fear!” When clergy make fear-based rather than love-based decisions, they are sacrificing their freedoms – and the freedoms of others – for what they perceive to be security.

It is security in traditional ways and what has been routinely familiar. Meanwhile, while this striving based on fear is going on, afflicting and constricting others, traditional and conventional ways and methods slip from one’s clerical grasp, anyway.

The only things that do not change are God and change itself. In God is total Love and no Fear. To be in the image of God, of course, is to be in His Love. The challenge in the perilous days ahead, of course, is to make decisions on Love rather than Fear.

This involves inwardly taking a stand! This end-times stand always involves the question, “Am I making myself feel better by making others feel worse? Am I attempting to make myself feel more secure while destroying the God-given freedoms of others? Am I prideful rather than humble?”

Yongi Cho, instead of closely guarding and controlling the small congregation he had, put it in God’s Hands and watched it grow! He found it not only right but an effective method of evangelization. He let go of the security his five loaves and two fish gave him, and joyously watched them multiply and multiply!

So the end-times task of clergy is not to make “logical” decisions based on fear – where Satan is conforming them to his image – but based on Love. The Precious Love of God! In this way, Holy Spirit Liberation will continue to liberate, taking its full effect, instead of being suffocated and subdued by clerical decisions blindly based on fear – and self-righteously afflicting others with repercussions….

In this respect, clergy must determine to not conform to the spirit of the age, by unwittingly conforming to the words of world-government-forcing Henry Kissinger, who said, “The time is coming when you will gladly trade your Freedom for Security.”

The Christian perspective is that troubled clergy can have real Freedom AND Security, by prayerfully making decisions based on Love – avoiding wrongful control of others and a dangerous suppression of the Holy Spirit. No matter how altruistic and well-meaning fear-based decisions may seem, leadership oversteps its God-given bounds and needs to be rectified.

Stand! And keep Standing! With Divine Love saturating your decisions! While always checking one’s clerical spirit for fear and for the wrongful, damaging manipulations it causes, with people under your spiritual umbrella.

Another contrivance of the spirit of the age is the “Thought Crime” legislation, on the books since 1996. That is, if one is even suspected of one day going to commit a crime, that person can be arrested. Needless to say, that is anti-Christian legislation and is unjust.

In the same way, fearful pastors can arrest the spiritual development of others by fearfully obsessing that, one ominous imagined day, one of the laity may do something wrong, someday. Truly, it is the pastors who need to switch over to Love mode and put all in God’s Hands.

For Freedom AND Security for themselves and others! As C.S. Lewis would say, one must successfully overcome the spirit of the age. In our end times drama, this includes the overcoming of prioritizing security in one’s clerical self, to rather opt for “Freedom all around” for oneself and the struggling laity.

In our western civilization, one is innocent till proven guilty. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” Those who do this, will not perpetually obsess with accusing fellow Christians of “thought crimes” – of maybe one day causing disunity, for whatever reason – but will successfully overcome the spirit of the age, as a true Christian leader!