Lent Day 4: The Problem with Christians

A couple weeks ago I went into my church office in between setting up for offering and communion and placing my Bible and sermon inside the pulpit; sitting on my desk I found a very large manila file folder with 'Take to Pastor Kenny and Mary' written with permanent black marker on it. As I said, I had things to do so I left the folder where it lay and went about my business. At the close of the service one of my parishioners shook my hand and told me that they had given me a folder full of various items so that I could use them for bulletins or in sermons. I politely thanked the lady and took the folder home with me when I left.

Until about ten minutes ago it has laid on a filing cabinet in my home office. You see, for a little while I had been staring at a mostly blank screen attempting to find some inspiration for today's blog entry. I looked all around my office and my eyes finally landed on the thick folder. I decided to pick it up and look through it to see if anything struck me. There is a whole cornucopia of items in that folder. Some of them are meaningful quotes, others are meditation thoughts, and then there are the comedic items as well.

I didn't get that deep into the stack when I came across a few items that I had remembered seeing cross my Facebook feed or that had shown up as email forwards. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you may just remember a blog I did about some of these exact forwards. If not you can find it here http://pastorkslifelook.blogspot.com/2012/06/re-post-if-youre-christian-or-love.html. As I continued to peruse the folder I came across an email forward that made me cringe. I do not know its original author, but I will share it here, so I can then tear it apart.

Florida Court Sets Atheist Holy Day

In Florida, an atheist created a case against the Easter and Passover holy days. He hired an 

attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christian, Jews & observances of holy days.

The argument was: it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized day.

The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer,

the judge banged his gavel declaring, "Case Dismissed." The lawyer immediately stood objecting

  to the ruling saying, "Your honor, how can you possibly dismiss the case? The Christians have

Christmas, Easter & others. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur & Hanukkah. Yet my client

& all other atheists have no such holidays."

The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, "But you do. Counsel, your client is woefully 

ignorant."The lawyer said, "Your honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists."

The judge said, "The calendar says April 1st is 'April Fools' Day' Psalm 14:1 states 'The fool says in his heart, there is no God.' Thus it is the opinion of this court, that if your client says there is 

no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned."

Haha, right?

I don't think so. You see, if those of us who profess Jesus as savior are to have any kind of impact on the people who do not, the answer is not to belittle them. As I have stated before I have friends who do not believe in God, and I do not consider them fools, in fact most of them are smarter than I am, we just happen to have different views. This is not something to be belittled, but rather it is something to be discussed.

Once upon a time, [November of '95] dcTalk put out the album Jesus Freak. On that album was a song, What If I stumble. At the beginning of that song was a voice over by Brennan Manning declaring, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." When we confess love with our mouths and then in the next breath call someone who disagrees with us a fool we do not help others, but rather we hinder them.

I believe it was Jesus [Matthew 5:22] who said "Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, 'Raca' is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, 'You Fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell." Because of that, I do not care what David had to say in the Psalms, in fact I do not think that we should be taking most of what David and the other Psalm writers had to say as universal truths, simply as one person's intimate letters to God. 

To that end, my Christian friends, think before you forward something along, because Jesus also said something about the way that we judge others will be how we are judged [Matthew 7:2]. I think we need to be showing the world around us grace, partly so that grace will be shown to us.

Thus endeth the sermon.

Peace and Love,

Pastor K