By James Wilson
Our God is a very talkative Deity, mostly full of words describing His love and plans. There are times He says things we don’t want – but deeply need – to hear. Last summer when the Supreme Court overtly ignored the Constitution to mandate gay marriage He told me to sacrifice a sacred cow. While I walked down a hallway of the California State Capitol He said to give thanks for the decision. He said He enabled this decision so the Church would have to become the Church – no longer be able to hide behind sacred cows like the Constitution, the rule of law, or even a social consensus. We are stripped of secular backing. We are left with nothing but the authority of a God who creates and destroys empires, and Who fights by shedding His own blood first.
Make no mistake; the King of the Universe is plenty upset with judges and others who defy His blueprint for humanity simply because they can. But He is so passionately concerned for the integrity of the people who are called by His Name that He will sacrifice anything – beginning with His Son – to call us back to dependence on Him. That is what He was saying to me and my team about the SCOTUS decision on marriage. Now, in this time of nascent Great Awakening, He calls on us to sacrifice the sacred cows on which we depend more than on Him.
The concept of sacred cows originates with Hindus eating no beef because they believe cows sacred. The popular western image refers to any counter-productive practice slavishly adhered to, i.e. Hindus deny themselves a primary source of nutrition by their superstitious regard for bovine life. In a Great Awakening Christians need to understand that we can substitute a goodly shadow of God, — like Hebrews 10:1 and the idolatry of the Old Covenant sacrificial code – for the best reality of God Himself. When this happens the shadow becomes just another idol – another substitute for God Himself – ripe for sacrifice in favor of the really real Father, Son and Spirit.
Sacred cows rarely begin as bad things. God recently gave me a vision of a banner stretched across a football field. Banners are stretched so the home team can electrify fans by bursting through them. This banner represented Aslan – from the Narnia Chronicles. Suddenly the banner burst and the real Aslan leapt through the demolished fabric. Point taken – the real thing is always superior to the mere representation. Sacred cows need to be sacrificed only when they become substitutes for the real Aslan – or the real God.
Many leaders say God has a serious controversy with America – our thirst for innocent blood through abortion, covenant breaking and government lawlessness, sexual sin, and idolatry – make it so. But God’s beef is not with America. It is with the American Church. It is with Americans who – like the biblical Pharisees – know better and defy God anyway. It is with the 90% of Bible-believing pastors who refuse to address political/ethical issues; the two thirds of evangelicals who neither vote nor advocate; and the hypocrites who call themselves Christians while disbelieving the fundamental truths of the Faith. His issue is with Christians whose personal life is indistinguishable from the rest of humanity. There is no more hiding behind hypocrisy any more than behind constitution, court, or consensus. We have a lot of sacred cows to sacrifice if we would again be a sacred people.
During the Fall 2015 Trifecta of Repentance along the American West Coast God called me to sacrifice my clergy collar. It is a good thing, that collar. It identifies me as a minister; it gets me into places others cannot go – hospital ICUs and jails – and it reminds me that I am not my own. But the Lord asked me to let go of everything but Him as my repentance – my re-focus of attention to His face. When I removed and laid it on the floor as an offering the Holy Spirit broke out and everyone in the room was hit by the love, the joy and the glory.
What is your sacred cow? Is it doctrine that makes you think yourself right and others wrong? Is it remembered glory like Azusa Street, the Latter Rain Movement – the Jesus People perhaps? Is it a refined way of doing ceremony that makes you more cultured and finessed than others? Whatever it is, it began as a beautiful banner. It is time to let it go. The real Aslan – the real Lord Jesus – is ready to burst out whether we are ready or not.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
