As I pulled into a parking lot today, I looked up to see the following front license plate: "Hey Bud, Wise Up, Christ Died for You!" which made me wonder what on earth the person was trying to achieve. Would someone passing by read it, slap themselves on the head and say "By golly, you're right. How foolish of me! Thank you for calling me an idiot - of course I want to hear more about your G-d!" Or was it what I see more and more of in the church, what I call in-your-face-ism. It's a great excuse to not have to engage anyone in conversations of faith. You tell them you're right, they're wrong, end of story, now turn or burn. I just have one question: has anyone ever been converted using this methodology? How would these holier than thous feel if a Muslim approached them in the same manner? Oh, excuse me, they probably would never be approached that way ... mainly because they probably don't have any friends who don't believe. Safer preaching to the choir, you know. Who cares if you burn, at least I'm safe. Tee hee hee.
I know, I know, the excuse is usually, well wasn't Jesus in-your-face? Well, let's look at the evidence. Hmmm, who did Jesus condemn openly? Prostitutes or the church leaders of the day? Who was He quite gentle with? I guess it's easier to ignore His example and go your own way. It usually is. Look, I'm no saint, but at least I can admit it rather than pointing figures at everyone else (even though, ironically, this is quite a finger pointing post). It just kind of pisses me off because not only is this method not effective and not biblical, it is also counterproductive. How many people do you know that are turned off of Christianity because of this same attitude. And it's getting worse now that the politicians are getting into the act. I nearly vomited when I heard about the politicians addressing the Baptist church. The separation of church and state is more for the protection of faith than it is of the state, imho. Once you get caught up in this kind of horse puckey, allowing yourself to be manipulated politically from the pulpit, where is G-d? Anyway, kind of bums me out.
Unfortunately, in-your-face-ism isn't just a habit of the Christian community. I am so tired of folks convinced there is no G-d going out of their way to tell me how my knuckles drag because I do believe. It happened again at a posting board that I visit - a blatant attack on faith as being silly and uneducated. You know what, why not discuss things like civilized human beings rather than attack each other. Oh, I'm sorry, that means you'd have to leave your comfort zone and actually talk to someone who holds a different viewpoint. Didn't mean to make you so uncomfortable.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Gah! I hear this loud and clear... I think I might have ranted on this recently somewhere.
I do know that when someone gets in my face, I tend to want to go the other way. I think we're all like that.
I would have been very interested in seeing exactly how Jesus handled everyone. I tend to think he was diplomatic, but serene... bold but not overbearing.
I wish I could be...
The only recorded time that Jesus was in-your-face biblically was with the scribes and pharisees, the money changers at the temple, etc ... in other words with people who should have known better. With true "sinners", he was recorded to have been very gentle - think about his words to the woman caught in adultery ...bad paraphrase but something like "Woman, where are your accusers?" and then "Go and sin no more."
Good points... though, He DID tell people when they are sinners... he was just gentle about it...
Jesus was all about pointing the way for the sinner to be redeemed....UNLESS that sinner was going around crowing about how righteous he was.
Sometimes I think that the real reason Jesus was executed was that he had too many people thinking about how the religious heirarchy was set up and challenging the status quo. To Jesus, it seems that the greatest sin was hypocrisy, because it was the only sin that went unchallenged and therefore unrepented.
I totally agree, Don. The Jewish hierarchy was responsible for his death - and it was because he was challenging the political status quo (which the Romans didn't like either). Yes, it served a political purpose, but the earthly reason was pure politics.
Post a Comment