I was surfing around recently and found a very rosy and uplifting looking site. Some kind of new-agey deal where we are all one, we are all energy, and we have some loving, caring and mystical connection with the ancients who built the stargates, and yada yada. It is usual fare for many of the modern day, sometimes environmental religions, or belief systems, or whatever you want to call it. As you may be able to tell, I have a problem with that. It isn’t that any of it sounds bad, but that is the problem.
Any religion, belief or idea that does not have a deep, solid, hardcore, take-it-to-the-bank approach to dealing with all the suffering and pain in the world and ignores it out-of-hand such as this site I saw, is dead wrong and completely missing it. This type of feel-goodery that does nothing to explain the human condition and some how offer a way to save it, isn’t worth milk money. The answer is not something where we cleanse our auras in a candle lit and incense filled room, and trancify ourselves until we forget our troubles and feel safer and more peaceful while the world goes to hell.
Christians also act like there is nothing wrong. We live inside the little comfortable white fence we’ve built and carefully kept painted. We value a beautiful song, we love a warmly written book, but we think nothing of the brutality with which Christ was killed. We don’t see the despair that lives next to us, we do nothing to reach outside our own little sphere at all. We somehow think the problems in the world will take care of themselves, and we just have to dutifully do our little jobs and wait for Jesus to come back.
May I posit? Ha, my favorite question. What? I have complex thoughts, I can’t help it. What if Jesus isn’t coming back? He may not until the world hears the gospel. I’m not saying get out and preach. You can, which would be cool, but why aren’t we aware of the world’s wounds? Why aren’t we the first people out on the street in the cold dark with bandaids and a friggin bonfire. You can’t light up the darkness while you’re in the light. You have to leave the peace and comfort of your favorite complacency. You HAVE TO. You have to go where no one you know would dare to go. We claim to be in the world, but largely we just are in our OWN world, not the real world where people are. There is some serious pain, bondage, and suffering going on in our world. The hurting do not attend church potlucks. The suffering souls that scream in agony while they sleep haunt only the heavens. They never reach our ears, because we are far off, not listening, not running toward the carnage, hunting down the aftermath.
There is a war going on, and yes, we have a magic bubble all around us that keeps us safe from the shrapnel, but the other people don’t they are getting cut down by the sin, madness, and evil that is ravaging the lost. You may look into the eyes of lost people every day and never know it. Not all who are lost wander. Many of them cover it, and are good at it. Many would deny it openly. Many would laugh at you for thinking so. The deep dark secret is that everyone is dying. Every day we are all dying a little more. We are on this endless countdown to zero day. Death will come, but more often than not, it occurs in the heart, long before the body stops breathing. There is no life in people walking around, they don’t know what life is about and have even stopped caring about that.The pain is numbing, blinding, and we all cope with it somehow (usually destructively) and pretend nothing is going on.
All this doom and gloom, I know. Sorry, I usually only talk like this on mondays. My point here is that there is an answer, of course. The sad part is that we already know and enjoy it. We have the key to beating back hell. We don’t really fully get that I think. The problem is that we are so disconnected from the true heart of God, the real reason he came. We don’t know what God’s heart is like, what he feels, how much he cares. We are so busy trying to earn the grace we already have, which is a deception and an epidemic that must end. We can’t earn God’s favor. We already have it. Now that we do, we need to share the fact that it is available with the world. They don’t know it or feel it, and they may not want it either. There will come a point in their lives where they don’t know where to turn, for many people this happens daily.
My thought is that if we as Christians were in a relationship with all these people we despise and are repulsed by, and they needed someone to turn to, you might be the one. Just by praying or something. That way, when life happens to them, you can offer acceptance, love, and unconditional friendship, which is different, amazing and will rock their world as they quiz you about where your hope comes from. That is the flash point when heaven crashes to earth and the truth becomes plain as day. It is our job to be in the place we need to be to show up at divine times when the world is falling down. It isn’t like we need to wait for the world to fall down to have a message. It already is, and we have the answer. Don’t bottle it up. This is why Christ is the only way to God, safety, peace and eternal life. He answers pain, suffering, and anguish, not just ignores it, and we shouldn’t either. Seek out pain, find the hurting, and help them. It isn’t hard, and they aren’t that far away. We were made to be heroes, angel, sons of God on earth. What if we were the only angels God sent to this planet? We aren’t, but we should act like it.
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