It takes pain to make love. And I find increasingly that we do not have enough pain for ourselves in American society. Especially the Christian. We tune into Christian radio, and what do we hear? That God is good, and Jesus loves us, and how blessed we all are. Don't get me wrong, these are true. But we never feel a passion for the lost. We feel content to say "I don't want to push my beliefs on others, because it will only push them away from Jesus." The older I get, the more and more I find that these people are running from Jesus. They find comfort with the people who know Jesus (in the loosest sense possible) and do not condemn their sinful behavior. They take this to mean somehow, they are justified in their actions before God. This person knows God, right?
I think one of the most damaging things we can do as Christians is deny that sin is sin, and all too often we do this inadvertantly by not admitting to the caustic, dark, evil nature of sin. We treat it like every sin is just an "oops" and everyone is a well meaning human being so it won't hurt anyone will it? We ignore the fact that the very nature of Sin separates us from our creator and sustainer. When we live with unrepentant sin we're like an engine with a hole in the oil pan. The one thing keeping us from self destructing is slowly leaking away, and we like to say, "It's just a small leak."
The world has been advancing on the church, where the church is supposed to be invading the world. Have we become so stagnant that we get to discuss whether we should take part in our own governments as Christians? Let me clear this up right now, Separation of church and state is for the Church's protection from the state, not the other way around. Sure there should be a freedom of belief. Sure the government should not tell us what to believe. But the Government has been endowed with the power to tell us what to do, and the power to punish us if we choose to ignore it. Since our government takes it's direction from us, we have an obligation to ensure that the laws are Just, and give protection for the weakest among us, that these laws encourage righteousness, and not lawlessness. That these laws provide a framework that can bring a person to God, and when they find God, they will never need worry about man's government again, because their government beats so in tune with the Truth, that nothing good is illegal, and nothing illegal is good.
Yet again and again I find myself arguing with Christians who want laws repealed or want laws unmade that protect the weak, and encourage righteousness. Instead they want people of the world to have freedom to make themselves more captives of their sinful desires, furthermore, in ways that hurt and kill themselves and others. Christians who will support laws that force me to wear a seatbelt and a helmet, and yet allow others to kill their offspring, and their own bodies slowly.
So often their excuses are paltry: "we can't fully enforce it..." Right, we can't enforce the speed limit, so maybe we should get rid of that too. Hell, murder has been illegal for centuries, but it keeps happening, we suck at enforcing that, maybe we should just give up and let people do whatever they want! When will they grasp? The world has been lawless since Eve ate the apple, and Adam who was with her joined her in her rebellion. The lawless break laws, that is what they do! The laws are there to show them the right way to do things, They speak with their conscience. Instead we'd rather have people killing themselves with their conscience, and heaping more guilt on their own heads as punishment, while society looks idly by and tells them "You've done nothing wrong."
I'm just getting so tired of a church that lives like the world and defends the world's sinful and lawless actions. Yes I can't expect them to live like Christians, but I can expect those who profess Christ to mirror him, and Christ never told anyone "Go and keep on sinning, because you don't know me, it's ok." Every single person Christ touched helped and healed his full intention was to deliver them from Sin. Christ didn't abolish God's law, he didn't break God's law. He filled it so in him we could have the perfection we can't attain. And now Christians refuse to tell the world that they Need him for fear of "pushing them away" Instead we grant them a safe haven where they can reprimand their conscience. "This person is holy and they say I'm allright, so shut up, what I'm doing is not wrong!"
I think really we're afraid of what they'll say, afriad of what they'll think. We're the doctor who won't amputate an infected limb because we don't have enough anasthetic to make it not hurt, so instead we watch the patient die.
Maybe we Christians should act like Christians, just as the doctor should be a doctor, put a stick in the guy's mouth, put on a tourniquet, and hack off the limb, to save the man's life. We need to stop condoning sin by our silence, and encourage repentance that leads to salvation.
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