Sometimes I question your faith.
I've discovered a few blog links which have helped me write more. One is Jeff Goins' class on finding your voice... the assignment is to write about what makes you mad ... hence this post.
Another site is called 5-minute Friday ...
Thursday night at midnight, the link provides the "Word" of the Friday, and we are to write about that word for 5 minutes. No editing, no research, just a shitty first draft on said word. The only other rule to 5-minute Friday is to read the link before or after yours and encourage them with a comment.
The link before yours. The link after yours.
The generation before yours. The generation after yours.
Sometimes the link gets broken.
If you need encouragement, this is probably not the blog to be reading.
I blame Christians.
Try hash tagging abortion, gay marriage, tea party, I heart George Zimmerman, I hate Obama or Public School System will ruin your child, you will find a slew of so-called Christians ranting, raving, and waving their "America is going to hell in a hand basket placards". Most of the ranters are moms and dads... parents to the next generation.
Well here's MY rant.
I blame Christians.
I blame Christians for jumping on the evils of abortion and neglecting to befriend the scared and confused pregnant girl.
I blame Christians for saying they hate the sin, but love the sinner. No you don't. How many gay friends do you love? How many gays read your judgmental blogs?
I blame Christians for not putting their arm around the Trayvon Martins of the world and showing them the love of Jesus.
I blame Christians for not teaching their children how to listen, give, be thankful, and think more highly of others than they do themselves.
I blame Christians for telling their daughters to save themselves for marriage and dressing provocatively constantly.
I blame Christians for spewing hateful rhetoric when someone is not "like"them and living in their secret sin worlds.
I blame Christians for campaigning against gay marriage and yet sitting in their loveless marriages.
I blame Christians for preaching "God Looks On The Heart" and posting fat people from Walmart on their status updates.
I blame Christians for no one befriending radical terrorists attending flight school in their town for over a year.
I blame Christians for hardly being able to carry on a conversation that is not about themselves or their opinions.
I blame Christians for talking incessantly about their exercise regimes, and yet letting the seeds of bitterness and anger grow like cancer in their inner man.
I blame Christians (not for pulling their kids from the public school system) but for the constant negative attitude and, holier-than-thou internet club
I blame Christians for blaming the ills of the world on a political party and never taking responsibility for their own mistakes or miserable life
I blame Christians for wanting so badly to be right they will forfeit even family relationships
I blame Christians for coveting what is on the other side of the fence and ignoring the fields which are white unto harvest.
I blame Christians for clinging to their guns and religion instead of kicking their fears to the curb.
I blame Christians for their endless idle chatter about everything under the sun, except loving their Father with all their hearts, loving their neighbor as themselves, going into all the world to preach the gospel, and taking care of the less fortunate.
Sometimes I question my faith.
10 comments:
Whoa. Dang. I think I always knew it but it stings to read it: I am to blame. Praise God for His grace through Jesus Christ, for I am unworthy on my own. I am to blame. Thanks for keeping that in perspective.
Amen, Ben A. Grace greater than our sin!
Some of this seems like well intentioned frustration with hypocrisy, some of it seems unscriptural, and some seems unreasonable. My qualm with the approach is that in touching on everything so hastily, no topic gets a fair hearing. And then you risk just sounding like you just want to be right, like you accuse others of. Serious topics your holding forth on here. But what if you picked one of them and developed it? It might occasion a fairer treatment of the more complex ones.
Not sure why that posted twice, sorry.
So many typos, good Lord. Sorry. I wish you could edit a logger comment. Oh wait, I'll just delete it and repost!
I know, I know. It's just a rant. Fair enough.
But it's still an expression of ideas, and each one either has merit or it doesn't (or some mixture of the two).
Here is something that jumped out at me while reading it:
Why this insistence on "blaming Christians" for the ills that revelation tells us are the result of man's rebellion toward God? (This is what I meant above by 'unscriptural').
Suppose for a moment that all Christians behaved as you wished they did. Well, the ills/sin would still exist. Therefore Christians are not the cause of it. Therefore it is inappropriate to 'blame' them.
You may think they respond to those ills in a way that is disagreeable. However, in the first place, that is a different claim than the claim that Christians are to blame. And secondly, whether your generalizations about what they ought to be concerned with and how they ought to respond are right is question that would have to be settled by taking a sort of "total view" approach to Scripture, i.e. Not by simply by saying that Jesus said we should be "loving." Christ speaks throughout Scripture. Not just in Gospel passages about brotherly love. Elsewhere we are exhorted to hate. Now what do we do? Is this a contradiction? No. We just have to take a total view of Scripture.
I just want to add something by way of example, using one of your examples from the piece.
Now, no one denies that we should be loving. But neither does the Bible command us to lay down and die to the forces attempting to destroy us.
Consider for a moment that just what those forces are is a matter that some people are more clear about than others. Surely you have to grant that. For instance, when a Father tells his daughter "that song will not be played in this house because the view it expresses is of the Devil," he is acting on knowledge he has, and she does not, about the interest and operations of Satan. He knows something she does not.
So when someone warns you, or you overhear people warning one another, about state-funded education (as you complain about in your piece) how do you know they are doing the same as the father, i.e. acting on knowledge they have about the Devil's methods? How do we know your rant about their 'holier than thou' attitude isn't merely equivalent to the daughter's stomping her feet at her father's view? Please understand the analogy. I'm not calling you a child. I'm saying that since we all grant that there are degrees of discernment about the Devil's agenda, how do you know yours is complete in the way that your rant assumes?
Though I don't know who these holier than thou home-schoolers are, let me try and defend them for a moment, in the interest of charitable interpretation.
The Bible puts forth a very definite view about the role of family and state. This view has implications for the role and rights of education. So Christians concern themselves with homeschooling because the DEVIL seeks to take Christian children away from their families and educate them AGAINST Christ.
Now can you possibly think its somehow inappropriate for them to fight that fight? Maybe, like the father and daughter example, they are just protecting their own against an encroachment of the Devil that you don't happen to understand/appreciate.
Of course you can always recur to the point about 'how' things are communicated. That is a good point, in many cases. Certainly everyone struggles with it. But I would be very careful about disparaging causes as not being part of our calling, or saying that it's not being "loving" to talk about them, or even rant about about them. It is LOVE for his neighbor that causes a man to fight for his neighbor's God-given rights. It is LOVE for your family that causes a man to fight for your right to teach your kids about Christ, unhindered by the State.
Just an example.
love, Nick.
And yet, there seems like there MUST be some form, kernel, deposit, semblance (etc.) of truth to the notion that many of our social ills are deeply correlated with failures of the church. So then I'm tempted to say "I blame Christians too", in a way... kind of. Huh.
Failures like me, for instance.
I need a beer.
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