I'm always looking for other writings that expound on things that I'm currently thinking about. I came across a great article from The Internet Monk concerning "The Good Life". If you remember awhile back, I blogged about a great article I read in Harper's Magazine, of all places (I find myself picking up this magazine and reading through it every time I go to Barnes and Noble these days) about American Christianity and about the fact that even though the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" isn't found in the Bible (it's actually a quote by Benjamin Franklin), that Christianity in America reflects this phrase more than anything you can find in the Bible.
The above article continues this train of thought - although the Harper's article writer calls this American church phenomenon a tragedy of sorts, the Internet Monk goes quite a bit further and calls it idolatry.
5 comments:
I like his definition of what Christianity should be..cross cultural church planting movement This sadly is not what alot of churches are Although we say we are trying to reach out..we reach out to those like us...not those who are different
Good point, Rochelle - we do reach out to only those who are like us.
It's sometimes difficult to reach out to those who are different and who we haven't grown up around b/c we fear WE will be rejected. See - there's the 'me' instead of 'them'. Society has placed such a stigma on our looks that I sometimes think those who are different fear us and we fear them out of rejection.
On the other hand a lot of those who are different (depending on who you are classifiying them as) have mental or physical problems that sometimes we're not prepared or trained to deal with. This sometimes poses a problem in the initial meeting.
I only say these things b/c I've worked with my dad's Life Care Ministry center which is inner city work and have seen those that are hooked on drugs, yada, yada. But then there are those few that you find that you don't have to be 'trained' to meet. It all sounds so confusing and there are many senarios for those that 'are different' and how or whether we meet them.
Point being we SHOULD, we DON'T and we need to LISTEN, LEARN and then ACT.
Sorry I wasn't there. I had to jet. I still wanna have the talk sometime, though. Later man.
No problem, Anthony.
We'll hook up sometime.
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