I was raised in a basic right-wing middle class republican household. The kind of household where you might hear " How can anyone who calls himself a Christian vote for a person that................"
My father in law and I have been having an ongoing discussion about pacifism. He has been doing some research including spending time with a Mennonite pastor.
My final ;) thoughts, as of 12:40 on April 13th are these:
Satan doesn't care if you are a hawk or a dove as long as you confuse it with your religion. As long as you're spending time, energy, and money on rallies & volunteering, Satan doesn't care if its for the Young Republicans or Greenpeace.
He is just pleased that you have found a "cause" and one that is not showing The Way of Christ to the people with whom he plans to spend a rather unpleasant eternity.
As long as he can keep you wrapped up in being a conservative christian, a liberal christian, or even a vegetarian christian - the more time you will spend in discussion, rallies, and protests and the less time you will spend on Charity & Prayer,what Satan most despises.
I write in the above format as it seems a bit easier to sit and say what I think Satan believes. I have a little harder time pulling together the hootspa to say what God wants. But here it is.
I believe God wants us to have interests and passions while we are here on earth.He has placed passion and opinions within us. It is at the point that we confuse them with our relationship with God by using religion to justify this or that - that we move into dangerous ground that can compromise our relation to Christ.
Humbly submitted with some help from my favorite author C.S. Lewis
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4 comments:
Those exact thoughts are the same thougths I struggle with in relation to BOB. Are we making any headway? Is it worth anything at all? Is it just an excuse for me to skip church 'cuz I'm "getting my fill" on Tuesday nights? Are we just flapping our gums in a vain attempt to not do something more real and meaningful that involves us getting off our butts? Does the evil of smoking our pipes eliminate all the good God just did in our lives?
All right, the last one is a joke. But the rest are actual thoughts I've had. You're right, Satan will use anything to shift our eyes from the Creator and Savior. Our responsibility is to keep our focus centered. Our responsibility is to hold the steering wheel straight. And our responsibility is to shut up and listen to God. He wants us to have passions and desires. He wants us to pursue things. He wants us to talk about Him and figure Him out. We've just got to stay awake when we do it.
Not sure if I really said anything new there. Just some thoughts.
Okay Wayward,
You asked for opinions on the topic, so here I go.
While I don't disagree with the thought of making sure that we do not get distracted into spiritually meaningless issues by satan, I do think that Jesus himself took firm stands against sin (please note: I said sin, not the sinners)
He demonstrated frustration and his desire for changed behavior when he turned over moneychangers tables and pointed out wrongdoings by others.
I think that where we run into trouble is when we are trying to use God as the excuse for our personal agenda. I am often guilty of this myself. (I am after all just a little bitter that executioner is no longer a viable career choice)
I take no issue with people for instance, protesting abortion clinics. This is clearly wrong. We as a nation are outraged when societies partake in ethnic cleansing, but we allow it to happen every day. Our excuse is personal freedom and theirs is conquest, but in God's eyes, I doubt there is a difference.
I find it hard to believe that Jesus would have been cool with people who slay unborn children. I tend to believe that when speaking to them, he would have shown great love, but no doubt in where he stood on the issue.
I tend to believe that if something is a "gray area" it's really black and we just don't have the gender specific equipment to say so.
Where I tend to go astray are the areas such as political affiliation
and the vegetarian types. I am, after all at the top of the food chain, proud of it, and if I am going to consume a bunch of soy beans, it will be in an indirect sort of way. I will kill and eat just about anything that eats that vegetation crap and choose to get most of my veggies that way.
to my dear friend. I am always willing to go down a bunny trail - I call it a bunny trail because the post was about how we attach our white middle-class whatever to our religion and think it becomes an inseperable part. but I'm board so bunny trails are good. I would challenge you to find any example in the Gospels that would lead us to believe that the angry hate speach of an abortion clinic protest is what Christ wants us to be doing.
The turning over of the money Changers does not even come close. these were people claiming to run his fathers house and that was what spiked his anger. I haven't seen an abortion clinic yet that pretends to be a part of God's Church.
There is NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! question that abortion is a great evil if not the great evil of our time. But how did Jesus treat those who were the sinners of his time.
woman at well - Love, Forgiveness
Woman to be stoned - ", "
Zachious - Love, Forgiveness
As I have said in previous posts - I believe you would find Jesus at the Lifeline Shareing his compassion instead of picketing the clinic.
I have lived my life surrounded by right-of-center Republicans - people who might well say, "How could anyone who calls himself a Christian be like that?....." But, you did me the favor of visiting my blog, so how can I do otherwise?
There is an old story - a Buddhist story, no less - that is more than a little appropriate here.
The young monk came to the Temple Master and said, "Show me the moon!" The Master led the the student outside, and pointed at the thin crescent of moonglow hanging in the sky. The student, however, did not follow the pointing finger, but instead fixated on the finger itself - staring at it and the hand it was attached to from this angle, and then that. He turned away, shaking his head, muttering "...very interesting moon...."
So often we talk about the church, or the government, or the issue, as if it is the most important thing we can be dealing with. And yet, if we do that, we allow ourselves to be distracted by the finger, and we never see the moon.
There is an amazing book, titled Take This Bread by Sara Miles, where an agnostic lesbian war correspondent encounters the living Christ in the act of taking communion. Her sudden conversion leads her to start a food pantry in a San Francisco neighborhood. She envisions the food pantry as an extension of the Eucharist - bringing bread and wine to the hungry, and trusting that God can take these simple elements and make Himself incarnate in them.
Sara Miles is not one who you would expect to be doing Kingdom work. She - like myself - would not even be welcome in some churches.
But it seems that God will use whatever clay is on the wheel. It's not that she is holy, nor am I. It is God-in-us that shines through, not anything else.
Fascinating topic. Thanks for making me think and reflect...
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