July 09, 2009
Dead Fish
In relinquishing her position as Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin said in a news conference, “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow.’ Nah, only dead fish ‘go with the flow’.” Maybe that’s why some of us are failing discipleship 101…we’re trying to evangelize folks who just want to go with the flow.
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Gail;
-----I so want to cast the reflection of your point back onto the one’s doing the evangelization and discipleship! But I have to avoid even eluding to even one of His followers as a dead fish. Yet I must point out that far too many of us do go with the flow. And me too. Every one of us has some flow we go with. Paul pointed out in I Corinthians 3:10-15 the salvation a person has even though his work be wood, hay, or straw. In Romans 15:1-2 he testifies to the importance of the weak in the Lord, that we should please them, too. And in I Corinthians 12:23 he makes a case for how important the weak really are. For calling upon the name of the Lord is the first step which carries one across the threshold of the door from eternal death to eternal life. We truly can reserve dealing with attitudes for our side of that threshold.
-----My love for God is no longer based upon my gratitude for salvation, as it once was. It is now based more upon the beauty and truth of the grace and mercy in His love for people who are not that much better than the rest of the garbage humanity is, even for the best of us still not being much better. He had enough committed followers from which to choose seventy to send throughout the country preaching His salvation and kingdom. They must have been a special lot. Yet on the night He was crucified there was not a crowd of protesters carrying placards such as, “JESUS DOES NOT DESERVE THIS - WE DO!” All but a pitiful handful scattered. And the handful were silent at the foot of His cross, staying in line lest they be raised, too. Yet He continued to die for every one of them who were going with the flow. And afterward, when they had been filled with the Spirit which dwells on the inner side of the threshold, we saw some of them stepping forward with so much boldness they also joined Jesus upon crosses. But still, the vast majority of Christians during the following years hunkered down in, or flat ran from, the persecution that rose. But God still cared for every one of them, weak and strong, vowing that not one should be lost.
-----I have a brother, whom I love and admire dearly, who believes that at some point in eternal time every last human cast into Hell will come to the realization of all of his wrong and will then be lifted by God from Hell into Heaven. I certainly wish that were true, but scripture does not bear it out, to put it mildly. What scripture does emphasize is that we are saved by the work of His mercy alone, whether we be much or nothing. And even though go-with-the-flowers have done great damage to the church and its image, they will emerge from the fire by the skin of their teeth. But emerge they will! And that is our call to welcome them across the threshold, too, despite the fact we will have in them harder work to do later.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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