“I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the Church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.” 1 Corth 5:9
Here the Bible teaches that Christians are NOT to judge the people of the world. Rather, the Christians are called to judge only those within their Church! The people of the world will always sin—that is just what the flesh does; so judging the people of the world is like shooting fish in a barrel. But the Christian is not called to shoot fish in a barrel; rather they are called to be “fishers of men”. They are to bait and lure them in—and their bait is to be the Love of Jesus. A man can ONLY be made Holy through Jesus. By judging the people of the world, we send the message that they should already be Holy in their own strength! The people of the world are not playing with the same deck of cards. The Christian’s “deck” is the Bible; and the Christian should NOT expect the people of the world to adhere to the Bible!
But this phenomenon of Christians judging the world began a long time ago because the “Christian” Church joined with the Roman Empire. When the Church merged with the State and the Roman Emperor Constantine became the Bishop, He proclaimed Christianity the official religion. This automatically made everyone in the Empire “Christian” instead of having to be converted in. The Holy Roman Empire also established “Christian” laws; and like the old Israel—expected their citizens to abide by those laws. And for the next 1500 years, this was the mindset. Everyone was a “Christian” simply by being a citizen of the Empire. But the Emperors USED Christianity to manipulate the hearts of the people, and thus control their lives. After years of the abuse, the people realized how the Church-State controlled them and they rose up and separated the Church from the State. Now Popes no longer act as Kings, and kings no longer ruled on behalf of the Popes.
During this time, the Protestant movement came to be and taught that people must convert into Christianity instead of it being a State mandate. But this new freedom opened Christianity up like a shopping market as several new denominations were formed. In order to hold on to their congregants, some of the hard lined Protestants began controlling their people just as the Roman Church had—even to the point of killing “heretics”. During this time, some Christians fled the religious persecutions and came to America. But sadly, that same pattern took hold as dominant Churches persecuted and killed heretics here as well. A man named William Penn who had obtained some land (Pennsylvania) made it a reserve for true religious freedom. This also meant freedom FROM religion as those who did not want to practice any religion were also welcome there. As people began to realize they were free from mandatory religion, they left the “Church” in droves. While this seems a bad thing to many; this is truly how it SHOULD be, as no one should ever be forced to be “Christian”! Christians need to stop trying to force whole nations to be “Christian”. George Washington is NOT the new Moses and America is NOT the new Israel. Rather, Jesus said His Kingdom (Israel) would no longer be found on any Land—but only within people’s hearts through the Spirit! Christians need to stop trying to force people to behave like Christians. They need to roll up their sleeves, go out two by two and win people into Christianity through Jesus—the way they were originally commissioned to!