May 07, 2009
Claim to Fame
I always feel strength and boldness anytime I can publically declare that I’m a Christian. It’s not hard to imagine that those in the early church would have felt a swell of pride in the boast, “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.” (Acts 11:26 NIV) The footnote on this verse in the NIV Study Bible says, “Christians [the title]. Whether adopted by believers or invented by enemies as a term of reproach, is an apt title for those ‘belonging to Christ’. Well now…doesn’t that just poke a hole in the pride bubble?
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----One man’s pride is another man’s disgrace as much as one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. There are plenty of people everywhere who think the term “Christian” to be a disgraceful label for a gullible, intellectual midget who neither knows the “facts” of science nor the freedom of man. But the Christian, understanding the nature of deceit, has less time for facts than for spiritual truths. Standing upon a granite mountain top, he can see across the valley of shifting, whispering facts to the other mountain tops all around. Those granite blocks of spiritual truths stand strong no matter how the fools in the valley shuffle and shape their libraries of scientific facts. And while the valley people swim around in their little pools of information, they scoff at the Christian upon the mountain top for not taking the intellectual dip with them. Yet they know nothing of the valley on the other side of the mountain, which has everything to say about the facts in which they swim. They can scoff and chide and castigate the name “Christian” all they want, and throw it into their garbage with the Bible. But until they climb the mountain themselves, they will never know the valley beside them holds the truth of who is the fool and who should be proud to be a Christian.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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