I have goals for December. They include a weekly post on Sunday. Get excited.
Last week at small group we talked about a passage of the Bible I have easily skimmed over all of my life- Jesus talking about the trials that the Christians would face in the coming day, when everyone would hate them and they would be persecuted for his name. I don’t know how to interpret this passage, and I am not sure anyone else did either. Wye used to talk about the difference between things Jesus said that were literal for the time versus things he would say that would transcend to our time somehow. All of it was very confusing and seemed like a way for us to pick and choose what to maintain in the modern church, but at the same time you don’t see me wearing a head covering to church every Sunday, so I guess I buy into it… I just have had to stick to what people smarter than me consider relevant to now.
But this persecution thing was a difficult thing for the small group. If we were Christians as God intended, would we be more persecuted in America? I don’t know, but honestly, I don’t think so. I do believe that Christianity is about Love. If it’s about God, it’s about Love. Our society only hates and persecutes those who are intolerant. Intolerance is the face of the modern church in America, but I think that is not how God intends it. I do believe that I am right in believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, but I am not and will never be righteous, which is the point. If I focus on the humility that comes with that perspective, I imagine that the idea of absolute truth and the fact that I am putting a generous amount of stock in its existence, will be easier to swallow for those around me of different beliefs.
But I do believe I am right. And I hereby promise to tell V that this month. More on that in later posts.
I read an article… okay, it was more like a comic strip… about Aldous Huxley’s projections of future society (Brave New World) in contrast to George Orwell’s (1984). And it was fascinating. George Orwell feared that books would be banned, but Huxley projected that there would be books everywhere, and no one would want to read them. Instead of Orwell’s ban on information, we have Huxley’s inundation of media to the point in which we can ignore a thousand flashing neon 48-foot billboards on the highway, or not hear that there was a devastating earthquake in a third-world country because we were waiting with bated breath for the next winner of Dancing with the Stars.
Both authors projected that people would be controlled- but one projected it would be by inflicting pain, and the other projected pleasure.
We don’t need a ban on Bibles to keep them from being read. Now banning something only makes it go ‘viral’ (see ‘Telephone’). Why would we need to be persecuted for our belief in God when our society says who and what you believe in is trivial. Why would anything anti-Christian persecute Christianity when it can belittle it and make it feel like a system too insignificant to pay any attention to? I honestly believe that actual physical persecution in the American church today would only make people pay more attention and remove those turned apathetic. But almost everyone in the South calls themselves a ‘Christian’, why remove that confusion inside and outside the church?
In this day and age, we don’t need guns to our head to decide we don’t want to follow Jesus. Having cable tv would make that decision for me every day, and I wouldn’t even know I chose. Who needs purpose when you have distractions? And distractions are endless and won’t bond the church together like persecution did in the early church.
I don’t mean to say that the physical persecution that Christians have faced for as long as there have been Christians and even today in other countries is not a huge deal… I’m just saying that I think that we don’t have an easy ride into eternity either. I do need to realize that this is something I need to be willing to suffer and die for because it IS that important that I believe Christianity is right.
I want to get to a place in which I value going to church like people who have to do it secretly in underground churches, treasure the Bible like people who would be imprisoned for owning it, and live so sure of my convictions that I would die in any way for them. All in a place and time that says I have a right to my own opinion, but not a right to say what that is… especially not while The Bachelor is on. So that’s the goal.
