I was just wondering...
...do we often spend too much time concentrating on less important issues at the expense of more important things?
Jesus said: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."
Are we always striving to do this in some of the things the church gets caught up in debating? I'm specifically thinking of the inordinate amount of time spent in recent time on the debate over gay marriage, and the seeming obsession that the condition of society is somehow linked as starting when the Lord's Prayer was removed from the schools. What also about all the effort spent in trying to get pre-Christians into the movie theatres to see 'The Passion' (if ever a movie sucked - that was the one)? What about the time spent trying to remember formulas? The debates on abortion and evolution? The money spent on court-cases to try and make a point, to score points against our opponents?
Loving God and Loving our neighbours like ourselves? We can't reach out with one hand, whilst smacking them over the head with the other. We need to reach out in love with both hands. Why is the Christian church not at the forefront of the 'Make Poverty History' campaign? Why is so much money invested in monstrous structures? I don't have all the answers, but these are questions I'd like to explore more.
Here's a few quotes that I read recently that got me thinking some of these questions:
"Eight million people die every year for the price of going out with your friends to the movies and buying an ice cream. Literally for about $30 a head per year, you could save 8 million lives. Isn't that extraordinary? Preventable disease - not calamity, not famine, nothing like that. Preventable disease - just for the lack of medicines. That is cheap, that is a bargain." (Bono)
"I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”...“Jesus refers to the poor over and over again. There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that call upon us to respond to the needs of the poor. And yet, I find that when Christians talked about values in this last election that was not on the agenda, that was not a concern. If you were to get the voter guide of the Christian Coalition, that does not rate. They talk more about tax cuts for people who are wealthy than they do about helping poor people who are in desperate straits.” (Tony Campolo)
Makes you think...right?
posted by wcs53 at 7:30 p.m.
5 Comments:
Amen!!!!Amen!!!!!Cluny
GAHHHHHH!!!! Makes us THINK?
(*timeout*)
When is this going to make us DO?????
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
James 1:22-25
OK, vent over... off to do something (yes, I am just as guilty as everyone else...)
Hmm.. I see where you are coming from Evangeline, but I also fail to see what the problem you seem to have is.
For as it says in your quoted passage, "not forgetting what he has heard", this therefore implies, especially when taken in context with other scripture which urge us to meditate and think upon the word of God.
I firmly believe that we must be sure to THINK upon things so that we may know then how best to ACT upon them. To act without thinking is foolishness as is thinking without action. For faith with deeds is meaningless as are deeds without faith.
Lurch - I forgot to add in a smiley to show that I wasn't actually frothing at the mouth! :-)
"Why is the Christian church not at the forefront of the 'Make Poverty History' campaign?"
You could list about another million "love" campaigns that the church is nowhere to be found on, yet should be leading. Who is more Christian, a man who gives another man his shirt, or a man who goes to church on Sunday?
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