Random Stew It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Your good friend
April 17th, 2008 - 08:21

It is sad, my good friend, that the church is (and always has been) plagued by such evil. Hypocrisy is much more insidious than evil such as this. Jesus would and does not advocate such acts and propaganda as perpetrated by organizations such as “the army of god”. In fact, if you look at how he treated “sinners” in his day you would find that he first showed his love for them, while also revealing to them where they were wrong. When they repented, he praised them and rejoiced (woman at the well, Mary Magdalene, the tax collector). When they did not, he wept and still loved them (the rich young ruler, his weeping over Jerusalem). It was the hypocrites that he ripped (the money changers in the temple, Woes to the Pharisees & Sadducees). He even went as far as to call them wicked vipers and children of the devil…just plain evil.

Whether one believes that evil is a human condition and nothing more or one believes that there is evil in the world as a result of the devil and his influence on the human condition. The fact is evil does exist. The evil perpetrated by organizations such as “the army of god” and other religious extremists or even individuals such as the young man who slaughtered the students at Virginia Tech or even the Hitlers of the world; these are not the evils that scare me. The greater evil is our indifference to the conditions in our society that we sweep under the rug such as abuse of certain constitutional rights in the name of personal freedom, the abuse of political power, the entitlement mindset of society and corporate greed. These are the more subtle issues that create fertile soil for evil to flourish.

However, violence will not solve these. Jesus dealt with these issues as issues of the heart. None of these abuses, hypocrisies or evils will change without first changing our hearts, first as individuals then as communities and then as a nation and then as a world. That sounds ridiculously utopia like I know. Jesus agreed with that. He said that these are things we will deal with in ever increasing intensity until his return. That is one of the parts of the gospel that requires a great measure of faith. But, it gives us hope for a future. This I know; it is a future that only God can create. If it is left up to man…God help us. Just look around at the Muslim extremists, the army of god, our politicians, our neighbors, our co-workers, our children, our spouses…oh, I forgot don’t forget to look in the mirror.

This of course is just my opinion…have a blessed day my good friend.