Sunday, April 20, 2008

i'm tired

i'm tired of fighting.

why must we always fight? i'm following this whole "expelled" movie thing and it's making me weary. why do we have to fight against culture and against science? why can't we encounter culture without pretense? why must there be an agenda for everything?

i'm tired of setting up boundaries. i'm tired of drawing battle lines. i'm tired of christianity always seeing things with a battle mindset. why are we so insecure? it's like we feel the need to prove our faith right and better than anything else. the thing is, we aren't supposed to! what we're supposed to do is encounter the world and show them the right way to live, and i'll tell you right now... throwing grenades is NOT the right way to live. it's about living life together. its about settling down for a process and not concentrating on getting evangelistic "notches on the belt." the ONLY way to convince people that our way is the right way to live is to live it with them! it's not about setting your friends down, drawing them a nice tidy diagram and leading them in the sinner's prayer. it's about being an example of Christ in ALL things to ALL people. when Jesus ascended, his commission to the disciples was to be his witnesses.

what is a witness? a witness is a testimony. it's a living example of some truth. witnessing isn't canvassing. witnessing isn't starting conversations with people having some sort of ulterior agenda or motive. our example is the witness, not our words.

does this all make sense? we're so damned misguided. and the sad thing is, in the average church, more people would be upset that i said the word "damned" than be upset about the body of Christ not achieving the prerogatives set for us by our Lord. it's not a battle, folks. it's a journey.

let's do this the right way.

1 comment:

Robbie said...

Right on brother. I think that this became a problem when church became a comfortable place to be. Like, maybe Consintine (sp?) didn't really do us a favor when he made Christianity the state religion. Being a Christian became the popular thing to do. Now we have people ging to church who don't have a clue what being a Christian is all about.

You're right. We are not called to defend Christ, the Gospel, or even ourselves. But that's uncomfortable. Taking abuse from our neighbor isn't comfortable. Turning the other cheek isn't comfortable. Being crusified is not comfortable.

Being an active witness of Christ is not a comfortable thing to do. Just the right thing.