The article was about an advertising company in Australia reversing its decision to pull an HIV Prevention ad from local buses. They’d run it, gotten some negative backlash from the public, so they pulled the ads. Then, after a second wave of public outcry at the recall, they reinstated it. Simple business flip-flop. The ad was sponsored by the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities, and the image was of two men embracing, holding an unopened condom. Pretty tame stuff compared to what people see on TV these days. What was the big deal? The photo wasn’t shockingly offensive, and the purpose was to save lives, so what was all the hooplah about?

Those pushy Christians were at it again. Turns out that the initial complaints came from a certain “Christian lobby”, trying to control the world again. Once the company realized it was a targeted political campaign by this group, they reversed course and put the ads back up.

And I thought, doesn’t the Church have anything better to do? Isn’t this exactly why people never turn to the Church when they are in real spiritual need? The world — people, real human beings — see the Church as a bizarre  organization full of angry people bent on putting society into a strangle-hold to preserve some artificial traditional values as though they originated on Mt Sinai. Is this what the Kingdom of God has become all about? People so focused on gaining power over others, controlling TV, schools, making laws about who other people can or cannot love and build families with? Since when has Jesus’ commission been to become the “God police”? No wonder nobody outside the Church takes the Church seriously.

The Great Commission is and has always been to make disciples. And the purpose was not to build a society of religious clones, marching to the same tune of morality and religious beliefs. The point was to bring lost and hungry people back into a relationship with a God who loves them.

When Christians fail in this mission — or substitute some other agenda in its place — the inevitable (and only) result is a mockery, an empty shell of ritual and tradition. One might as well paint “Ichabod” over the buildings in huge red letters — “God doesn’t live here anymore.”
Church folks regularly bemoan the exodus of the youth. Congregations become greyer and more wrinkled, as younger generations see the Church as irrelevant, out of step, offering nothing. Holier saints pray for revival, expressing their desire for this generation to see the moving of God with power as they may have seen in years long since passed. But then they load upon their brothers and sisters a burden of rules, regulations, traditions, and lifestyles — legalism, by any other name — and wonder why no one is pounding on the church doors to get in.

When we, as believers, focus less on eliminating “safe sex” advertisements from public buses, and start focusing more on the hurt, on those in need, on introducing those who hunger and thirst for “something more” to a God who loves and embraces them, that’s when we’ll see those days of “power” again. That’s when the Spirit of God will move again in our congregations in ways that caused previous generations to impact their neighborhoods and cities. Not by laws. Not by protests and targeted email campaigns. But by the Spirit. When we get back to what’s actually important to the heart of God, that’s where the Presence of God will manifest.

If we want a “real” move of God, if we want the “real thing”, then we’ve got to start focusing on what’s “really important” to Him. And that won’t be protesting civil union laws in Illinois, or condom ads in Australia. It will be getting back, once again, to the primitive message of “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink …” Maybe then the world will start taking Christianity and the Church seriously again. And until that time, we don’t deserve their attention.

Yesterday, my boss tells me he’s leading the company in the number of hours worked this month.  Of course he’s got a lot more responsibilities than I do, got a lot more invested and at stake in the company’s success.  In our conversation I throw out that old cliché about people on their deathbeds never look back wishing they’d worked more hours.  You have to balance work out with the rest of your life, find your priorities.  And that comment got me thinking about how I should be living my own life.  What are my “deathbed priorities”?

When I face God at the Judgment Seat, I want him to say that I’d completed the tasks he laid out for me.  I want to hear that “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  And that means I’d want to have cultivated a lot closer relationship with him now, here on earth, than I have.  I’d want to have listened more to those subtle promptings of the Holy Spirit to avoid those little traps I fall so easily into, to not say that one poisonous word of less-than-charitable gossip, to have said no to that second huge helping at the buffet, or to not have been so quick to say no to someone who could really have used my help at that inconvenient moment.

On the more human level, I’d want to have listened more to the ones I love.  I’d want to have been more interested, and expressed more love, spent more time with them, and less watching TV.  I’d want to have been more helpful to others instead of being too busy.  A little less focused on my needs, my goals, and been a little more self-sacrificing. I’d give up that grudge and forgive more quickly, more easily.  “Whoever wants to find his life must first lose it.” 

I admit: I suck at this.  I’m self-absorbed much of the time, insensitive (and over-sensitive), and, okay I’ll say it, most times just plain lazy.

But for the sake of leading a worthwhile life, I want to focus more on some of those things I’d do if I had one month to live.  I’m going to give God a few more minutes a day of dedicated one-on-one time.  I’m going to pay more attention to my friends, listen more and be interested in their lives, their goals, and let them know they’re important to me.  Love God, love others.  One little bit at a time.

Just thought I’d put that out for consideration …

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For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph 2:10)

One of the posters expressed his shock that his conservative Baptist church actually embraced and taught evolution.  His words sent chills down my spine — but probably not for the reason you might guess.  I don’t like secularists teaching theology, and I don’t like preachers or laymen “teaching” science. It’s not a matter of separation of church and state or anything high-minded like that.  It’s simply a matter of expertise.  Growing up in a conservative church, I heard a tremendous load of garbage coming from Sunday School teachers and from the pulpit itself whenever the teachers stepped outside the domain of their authority (Scripture and doctrine) and ventured untrained into the sciences.  It was the blind leading the blind.  Or worse, the blind locking the doors on searchers of truth. Images of bishops debating Galileo flash across my mind.

There is a huge number of believers well schooled in the sciences out there, real Christian scientists, but the rest of us are just interested dilettants, hobbyists. It’s a fun topic to explore, to discuss the implications. In fact, it’s healthy to openly discuss and debate these ideas.  But can we agree that such discussions should never occur from the pulpit?  When people — when we — stand in that position, we assume the mantel of divine authority. And in such a position, I would hope we would stay within the realm of that authority: Scripture, sound doctrine and theology. Our role is to lead others to God, to instruct them in the things of God and help them grow.  Not try to debunk the latest scientific trends.  Teach Genesis, teach creation, teach the principles the God of the universe would have us learn from Genesis.  But if it’s not described there, then as teachers of others, let’s not jump into it.

Okay, that’s my rant for the day. Why should preachers or teachers lose their source of power and step into an area of impotency?  

But for the rest of us hobbyists outside the pulpit, let the discussions continue …

Steve