Maybe we shouldn't listen to the experts

I had entirely too much fun yesterday watching the major news people trying to understand how Donald Trump won the election. Every poll they had showed him trailing Clinton by several points. They had spent much time discussing how unpopular he was, and most had spent weeks explaining how his campaign was destined to fail.

Yesterday, they literally had no explanation for how wrong they had been. Some thought that perhaps the polling questions were wrong, and that produced the wrong results. One said that perhaps Clinton's "ethical lapses" cancelled out Trump's negatives. Others blamed various decisions made by Clinton's campaign team such as not going to Wisconsin after the primaries. But one thing was obvious, no matter which channel I was watching, they were all stunned at the election results.

Now, I didn't enjoy this because I am a big Trump supporter. Among all the people who ran in the primaries he would not have cracked my top five. My pleasure came because I enjoy watching the elite who believe they know all that is worth knowing struggle trying to explain how they could have been so wrong. The mainstream media was so obviously biased towards Clinton throughout the campaign that any sense of journalism went right out the window. They did everything they could to convince the American public to vote for Clinton, and believed they had succeeded only to learn too late that they had failed.

For decades we have been told that the church in America is dying. We have been told that our beliefs are archaic and have no place in the public square. Christians are told that we have no right to try to force our beliefs on others, while others are free to force us to bow to their values. Years ago we were told God was dead, and many believed it.

Who told us this? It was the elite in the media, in government, in entertainment, and in the universities. The ones who believe that they alone know all that is worth knowing decided that God and religion, especially Christianity, was no longer necessary to our society so they began to do all they could to remove both God and Christianity from society.

Their problem is that God is not dead, and neither is the church. There's no doubt that the church has challenges and problems, but we are far from dead. Yes, liberal churches and denominations are dying, but conservative, Evangelical churches are growing. We may not be growing as much as we should, but we are still growing and we still have some measure of influence on society. Once the Evangelical church wakes up and realizes it has been lied to I'm convinced we will see the church become a force in our nation.

Like him or hate him, Donald Trump refused to let the media define him. The church needs to follow that same attitude. If the church doesn't define itself others will define it, and the results won't be good. It's time for the church to define itself and invite all who wants to be part of what God has called the church to be and to do to join us. If we'll do that, one day we'll turn on our televisions and watch the elite scratching their heads wondering how they could have been so wrong about God and His church.