"A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story." –K.P. Yohannan
I couldn't help but think of this quote as I read the comments on a recent ReveLife article. The exact problems I was talking about last night kept cropping up.
You had two Christians arguing vehemently about whether Donald Miller was a Christian. Two more arguing over whether the inquisitions were targeted at just Christians or not, and whether or not the Crusades were justified. Several Christians were arguing rudely with non-Christians about whether or not anyone can know anything for certain.
And if you visited these people's own xangas you find comments from people from the original discussion like "You drink, swear, and have tattoos, are you sure you're a Christian?"
But probably my least favorite was a response from someone about whether we're living in the end times. They argued that we couldn't possibly be living in the end times because life was worse in WWII when everyone was killing everyone else and our biggest problem today is having enough money for a pizza party.
SERIOUSLY!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?
A pizza party is our perceived biggest problem? Not the ongoing civil wars in Africa, access to clean (or even just drinkable) water, AIDS, grain shortage, lack of adequate medical care, forced prostitution rings, child brides, slavery, terrorism all over the globe, deteriorating economic stability, the rise in orphans, the increasing number of natural disasters, culturally required genital mutilation, racism, sexism, child and spousal abuse, new developing viruses....
And those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.
I'm not saying these point to us living in the end times, but give me a break, we do not live in a happy happy fun time, people! Maybe the biggest crisis that middle-class American individuals face on a daily basis is where to get money for pizza (though I doubt it: divorce, layoffs, increasing debt, sick kids, all come in above that) but the world is bigger than middle-class America!
Oh, and one more thing: an ongoing theme on the ReveLife post was that "an 'all you need is love' mentality" is detrimental to Christian outreach and those who embrace it have fallen away from God and need to just read their Bible.
And to that I say, maybe you should read your Bible. "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
"...if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
"'Don't the bible say we must love everybody?'
'O, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many things; but, then, nobody actually ever thinks of doing them.’" -- Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
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