Examine The Evidence Yourself

         “Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way.” (Daniel 3:29)

Nebuchadnezzar said this right after he invited Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of the fiery furnace into which he had thrown them because they had refused to bow down to the 90’ statue he’d had built. Once the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego impressed Nebuchadnezzar, he tried to co-opt Jehovah, making Him one of Nebuchadnezzar’s gods and threatening to punish anyone who even spoke badly of Him, just as he’d tried to punish Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You’d think it was abundantly clear that God didn’t need Nebuchadnezzar’s protection, but no doubt he thought G. od would be impressed with his zeal.

Eight hundred to a thousand years later, another king did roughly the same thing. Constantine claimed to have seen a vision, claimed to have converted to Christianity, and made Christianity legal. I’m not going to make any claims about the validity of his conversion or the benefit of the Edict of Milan for the Christian faith. That’s research you can do and decide for yourself. The point is that he was now on God’s side and expected God to be on his.

Co-opting gods is a long-standing practice among people in power and those seeking power. I’m not going to pretend that either political party in the United States is guiltless in this regard. However, a politician in Texas is currently going over the top in the cooptation department. His contention is that unless the government is feeding the poor, housing the homeless, welcoming everyone who comes into the country, healing the sick, etc., those who call themselves Christians are liars and/or hypocrites. In other words, if the government is not doing what Jesus never called on the government to do, this politician says we’re all disobeying Jesus.

From the 13^th through the 20^th Century, in at least some Roman Catholic nations, people served the nation by investigating individuals to see whether they were living according to the dictates of the Roman Catholic Church, and those involved in the investigation. Those doing the investigation were known to go as far as torture to prove the guilt of those investigated. It was known as the Great Inquisition. It seems to me that someone is setting himself up to be a new inquisitor. Am I wrong? Exaggerating?  Maybe. Examine the evidence yourself.