Description or Prescription
Our culture is so icon focused. We elevate the image above the truth. That’s why we are so devastated when our heroes fall. We have made them bigger than life.
We do the same thing in the church. We have made “Christianity” the thing. We have put more importance in the appearance than in being people who pursue God and no one can live up to what we have made Christianity to be.
“Christian” was a term that was given to God followers by men, because they saw a group of “little Christ’s”. It described what they were like. I’m afraid that people don’t see Christ anymore; only labels and icons of where Christ should be. If we are truly pursuing God, then the world would see a profoundly different view of Him.
Sometimes that pursuit takes us to places that are not "PC". The path toward God will often offend the masses. Sometimes it takes us to places that the church dares not go. The streets of Rwanda and the pavement of San Francisco’s Red Light District are strikingly absent of the footprints of Jesus.
But when you follow God, when you truly want to be where He is, it's not about what others think or what others would or would not do. It's about the "haunting" as John Eldridge calls it; the inescapable wooing of God to follow Him. It’s that feeling in your gut that if you don’t follow, then you will cease being alive.
I want my life to be about the journey with the Divine. I don’t want people to get stuck on the things I stand for. I want them to fall in love with the lover of my soul. That isn’t done in a church building on a Sunday morning. It’s done in community as we walk with God and with people. Christ infused His community with a culture of love that went against the grain of the established church. He infiltrated a religion of intolerance, infecting it with grace and created a culture of acceptance and worth. He did not create a system to make it happen, He did it with people. Meeting them where they were at and not expecting them to come to Him.
It’s time we got back to “Christian” as person, not as thing. We need to remember that “Church” is people, not a campus or a goal. Our lives are about expressing God and not perpetuating a system or entity.
Our religious culture is one of the biggest disservices we have done to our nation. We are trying to mandate Godliness rather than be Godly people who impact our world. Does the world know we are Christians by our love for each other? Black Eyed Peas asks the right question. Where is the love? God said, if you want to fulfill the all of the law, you need only do two simple things; love me and love people. When we do that, I believe Christ will be put back in Christian.
We do the same thing in the church. We have made “Christianity” the thing. We have put more importance in the appearance than in being people who pursue God and no one can live up to what we have made Christianity to be.
“Christian” was a term that was given to God followers by men, because they saw a group of “little Christ’s”. It described what they were like. I’m afraid that people don’t see Christ anymore; only labels and icons of where Christ should be. If we are truly pursuing God, then the world would see a profoundly different view of Him.
Sometimes that pursuit takes us to places that are not "PC". The path toward God will often offend the masses. Sometimes it takes us to places that the church dares not go. The streets of Rwanda and the pavement of San Francisco’s Red Light District are strikingly absent of the footprints of Jesus.
But when you follow God, when you truly want to be where He is, it's not about what others think or what others would or would not do. It's about the "haunting" as John Eldridge calls it; the inescapable wooing of God to follow Him. It’s that feeling in your gut that if you don’t follow, then you will cease being alive.
I want my life to be about the journey with the Divine. I don’t want people to get stuck on the things I stand for. I want them to fall in love with the lover of my soul. That isn’t done in a church building on a Sunday morning. It’s done in community as we walk with God and with people. Christ infused His community with a culture of love that went against the grain of the established church. He infiltrated a religion of intolerance, infecting it with grace and created a culture of acceptance and worth. He did not create a system to make it happen, He did it with people. Meeting them where they were at and not expecting them to come to Him.
It’s time we got back to “Christian” as person, not as thing. We need to remember that “Church” is people, not a campus or a goal. Our lives are about expressing God and not perpetuating a system or entity.
Our religious culture is one of the biggest disservices we have done to our nation. We are trying to mandate Godliness rather than be Godly people who impact our world. Does the world know we are Christians by our love for each other? Black Eyed Peas asks the right question. Where is the love? God said, if you want to fulfill the all of the law, you need only do two simple things; love me and love people. When we do that, I believe Christ will be put back in Christian.
posted by Spiritual Traveler at 10:05 AM
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