Sidetracked...might as well post!

So tonight I really meant to be finishing my sermon. A couple of years ago I realized that the Sunday message was so vital that I had to do my best to make sure that it was done not as a last minute project and was so important that I should get it done early. That doesn't always happen, but I work on it as much as I can as early as I can to devote as much time as I should to doing a good job with it. But tonight I became sidetracked.

I was looking for a good picture of Jesus that wasn't white. I could talk more about that later, but for now suffice it to say that it lead me to a great photo-mosaic made up of over 1000 unique images created by Christians meant to depict our Lord and Savior. However, the picture collage was created by atheists bent on proving that Jesus was just another myth in our pantheon of legendary heroes. Which led me to finding a video on YouTube describing the difference between a atheist life and a religious life.

I listened openly because I wanted to know what this person's understanding of Christianity (or as he called it, "religion") was. To summarize what he argued: Christians are a group of people fearing divine punishment, bent on getting the world to turn off their thinking and accept cold and unbending dogmas, who give money to an ineffectual church, and all of this is for no point because he doesn't believe that there is a God. You can find the video here. But please finish this post before you watch it.

My heart broke listening to it. Not because I felt myself agreeing (which I don't), but because I could feel the longing which God probably yearns for this person to learn the truth: that God is real and he desires this man to come to love him. I always find myself winding up with these kinds of things because I want to take the time to discuss and explain why in fact God makes sense.

But tonight I also did something else. I asked myself "Is there any truth to his claims?" This is something I learned while reading the book "Axiom: Leadership Proverbs" by Bill Hybels. Now you may or may not agree with how he does church, but if anyone has experience dealing with criticism, this man does. And what I figured out was this: the basis of this man's arguments had elements that could be found in Christianity. But in the people, not in what Christ taught.

I agree with him on these points:

• Sometimes we Christians act as if our brains have been turned off.
• Sometimes we have caused more harm than good.
• Sometimes we act, preach, evangelize based out of fear from hellfire rather than based upon how God has blessed and loved us.
• Sometimes we turn complicated problems into an occasion to pick a scripture or religious law and then oversimplify things.

My response: I am sorry.  There is nothing else than this that I can say, because we have acted like this in the past.  There is precedence for these claims.  We should get together as a group and apologize for our behavior.  However, I also know that this is not the case, nor are these things taught to us in our scripture or our orthodox beliefs.

I believe that our faith should make logical sense.  But we must also trust our personal experience.  And also utilize the tradition of the Church.  And since our scripture can be proven to have remained more or less the same over the years that must be our overriding measure by which we verify the other three.

For Christians, here is what I suggest that we do: hear the arguments of people like the above self-proclaimed atheist.  Next, let us not try to argue back in the forum of online responses to videos (which only allow us 500 characters anyway...not much space for a quality answer).  More appropriately, we need to have these discussions in the context of real relationship.  But more importantly lets strive to live our lives in a manner that proves these claims wrong.

It is vital that we:

• Keep our brains turned on!  Reason and faith are not incompatible!  They are not opposite!  I think I will go on more about this in a later post, send me a message if you want to hear from me personally regarding this.
• Our local churches must remember that God has called us to be relevant to our neighbors and to be engaged in significant work.  People, when we fight about the comforts we want on the inside of the building, we forget that we are supposed to comfort those outside it!  People who follow Christ are not our neighbors, they are our siblings.  Christ calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and I have often found that our neighbors disagree with and misunderstand us.
• Let us remember that Christ gives us a spirit of boldness, not a spirit of fear.  But let us not confuse that to mean he gives us a spirit of boldness to preach our fears.  Christ came to die for our sins, but he was then raised to new life--so that we could have that new life too.  Our message is a message of life, we should try telling people about that once in a while.
• Life is complicated, and so should our answers be.  We cannot turn homosexuality, abortion, greed, lust, drunkenness, and other "sins" into simple problems.  Nor can we excuse them either.  I cannot agree that God created people to be gay or any of those other things.  But we cannot fight them through hate or legislation.  We can only win through the power of God's love!  Let us live Christ's example and people will run to it, there will be no argument necessary when the results of real faith in God are present.

So what do we do when people like "FightingAtheist" and more dogmatic opponents to the church step forward to denounce us and criticize what we believe?  What do we do when we feel attacked and people argue against what we have committed our lives to? Well in short do this:

1. Take a deep breath and listen, really listen to what they are saying.  Then thank them for what they are sharing.
2. Ask, "Is there any truth to what they are saying?"
3. Correct what needs to be corrected in your own life.
4. Then share how Jesus is actually lived out in your own life and how he makes sense for you.  Don't show how they are wrong, but just show how Jesus is right for you.
5. And finally, allow them to make their own choices.  Its hard, but only God can change hearts--not us.  If you fight them, they will only screw themselves up to fight back harder.  We show people with our lives, not our arguments, that Jesus is real.  

Thanks for getting this far!  I know that tonight I wrote a long post, and I pray that it blessed you as you read it.  Jesus came so that we could have real life and have it to the full!  Let us be authentically his!  He gave his all so that we could be, so lets do it!  Let us be so filled with God's love that the arguments like these cease to have validity because they will no longer hold truth.