"Depressing"

In class tonight, we listened to a lecture on the state of the U.S. economy by Paul Krueger, given about a month ago. He described the different factors that contributed to the economic crisis that we are in today, and how depressing the economic situation was. As I was listening to the lecture (about halfway through), I realized that rather than hearing about the failure of the economy having a negative effect on my mood, my morale was improving!

Now almost completely distracted from the lecture, I wondered why my mood would improve while listening to the news of bad things happening to our country's economic system....and I figured out why:

Repeatedly over the last month or so, I have been able to see how extremely important it is for God's church to be a living, righteous, pure, and holy witness of Him -- and that that means that each member of the body MUST live their lives holily, justly, and unblameably before God and men. Holiness is NOT optional. Unfortunately, I have had to see this through encountering, confronting, and being confronted by people who claim to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, but who urgently insist that sin and iniquity are to be the normal life-principle of Christ's people. Not merely an isolated few people, but fellow students, leaders in the church, and friends.

In addition, I am faced with the situation where the pastor of the church that I attend insists on putting the church in the place of partaking in the use of pagan symbols as part of their celebration of our Lord Jesus Christ -- and I am absolutely terrified at the prospect of standing before the entire congregation and decrying the christmas tree as a morally indefensible practice for worshippers of the One True God to use, and then demanding that it be removed from the building.

My realization was that the problems posed by the failure of our economy are petty and insignificant in comparison to the problems facing the body of Christ. How can I be worried about the things of this world, when those who name the name of Christ are not departing from iniquity, but are instead departing to iniquity?