Trying to Serve God and Mammon Both

Can't be done, no matter how the religious Left tries to spin it:

NEW EVANGELICAL LEADERS like Bill Hybels, pastor of the mega-church Willow Creek Community, and Rick Warren, best-selling author of The Purpose-Driven Life, and pastor of Saddleback Church, have different priorities.

They are certainly socially conservative and concerned with the spiritual needs of their flock. But these emerging evangelical populists prefer to focus on issues that aren't expressly Biblical: curing AIDS, saving Darfur, and going green environmentally. (W.W.J.R.: What would Jesus recycle?)

All of the causes are much trendier than banning abortion and gay marriage. Warren generally doesn't step into the political fray, with rare exceptions like inviting Sam Brownback and Barack Obama to his church for an AIDS conference. However, the superstar pastor stopped just short of endorsing Huckabee, calling him "a man of vision, compassion, and integrity...and definitely Presidential material."

In the New York Times Magazine last fall, David Kirkpatrick described the cultural shift: However the "evangelical crack-up" could be characterized, the result is a "new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty -- problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers."

Pose the question of how to solve human-interest and environmental issues to today’s postmodern churchgoers and for many, the answer lies within the government. To paraphrase the lone evangelical on the left, Jim Wallis: If "the poor you shall always have with you," why not take some from those who are "blessed," and give it to those who need more blessing?

The problem with Warren and the like is that they've attempted to replace God's power through the sacraments of Christ's Church with their own political influence.

They've forgotten Christ's command to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's".

Man's justice is not, and can never be, God's justice. We lack the divine faculties for it. That people who've supposedly devoted their entire lives to the glory of God haven't gleaned this simple message from Scripture and internalized it makes me extremely suspicious of them.