Here's The Deal...

If you want to rant and rave against something that you think is bringing down society as we know it…or maybe is just imposing on your safe and comfortable bubble…I am all for it if you DO something constructive to back it up.  The number of Believers who send around e-mails about followers of Isl-am and yet don’t know any or strive to do anything to bring them any hope or truth infuriates me.  People who yell at homosexuals that they are going to hell but would not be the hands and feet of Jesus i.e. even touch said people with a ten foot pole need to pull that plank out of their own eye before they rant and rave.  Those who stand in front of abortion clinics with signs about killing babies, yet do nothing to work with the women who are entering said clinics…especially nothing proactive so those women have a chance of not ending up there in the first place have no respect from me.  Those who live in a land such as this and are scared out of their pants to go visit their neighbors because it is way out of their comfort zone and they know the gossip about said neighbors (me) should suck it up or go home (I put this in bold so it didn't look like I was just yelling at everyone else and leaving myself out). 

I am reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan right now. At first I wasn’t into it…I found it kinda boring to be honest. It was easy for me to say…yeah, people should be doing that, they need to be doing more than they are, blah blah blah. Then I began to look at my own life honestly in light of the book and then I didn’t like the book for other reasons – because I am deeply convicted by it. And frankly, some days (most days if I am honest) I would rather be lazy and clueless than convicted. 

My point is this: we can talk all we want about how Jesus spoke with truth and power and conviction to those in sin, but until our lives LIVE OUT the humility and courage and victory that Jesus walked in, I think we need to keep our mouths shut (and ironically here I am blabbing mine).  Think about it – Jesus ate with sinners, He washed their feet, He touched the blind man’s eyes, He touched the leper, He drew a line in the sand, He cleared the temple, He wept with people.  Jesus embodied the statement that actions speak louder than words.  When we start DOING what He did – meeting people at their point of need and in the depth of their sin instead of passing e-mails around about them or closing the windows tightly and hoping that they somehow go away, then we will be the true hands and feet of Jesus to the lost and dying world. 

The many things I have read lately about how bloodthirsty M-uslims need to be wiped off the face of the earth…not how my Jesus works.   Greg Boyd reminds us of the verse in Ephesians: For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)  He says that anything that has flesh and blood is not our enemy and we should fight FOR them. Does this mean that we condone their sin? Did Jesus? But it does mean that we give them a better alternative to the sin that they are living out of. 

Like I said, I am preaching mostly to myself… kind of a pep talk for the long days that seem not worth the effort in some ways.  I can’t get away from the fact that I want to be proactively living and working and bleeding and crying amongst the poor and powerless and scary and hurting, and maybe that means being uncomfortable or afraid. I would much rather be doing that, than I would do nothing but live in fear and paranoia and one day have to stand before the King and answer why I didn’t fight FOR the flesh and blood around me.  And this convicts me to go visit the neighbor. It also reminds me that I said I was going to zip my lip…and I didn’t actually keep that promise for very long!