January 05, 2015
Godless Men
Sunday I attended a Baptist
church and at the end of the service one woman was curious about the reason for
my visit. I told Kathy about the series of articles I’m writing on the different
worship experiences and she perceived me to be a reporter working for a
newspaper. I was taken aback when she asked, “Are you a Christian?” Seldom has
anyone ever asked me that question in a worldly setting, much less in a church setting.
Kathy’s question was bold, inquisitive and thought provoking. We don’t think
about being on guard during worship, and yet that is the warning we hear from Jude.
“For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly
slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God
into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord”
(Jude 1:4 NIV).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----God placed a mark on Cain so that nobody would harm him for killing Able. Things got so bad God flooded the earth. Then He told Noah, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” No longer was man to just stand by and let wickedness advance. He was to have some responsibility of his own for policing the state of mankind. Similarly, God’s adopted children are given some responsibility for policing the church. The wicked and the immoral are to be barred from our fellowship (I Cor 5:5, 9-11,) and we are not to even greet those who twist and distort the gospel (II John 10.)
-----The state of the world shows how pitifully we’ve performed both responsibilities. In these last several decades we’ve had too much shelter given murderers. We’ve made too much mourning for the wicked. Justice has become so perverted people have a difficult time even recognizing it anymore. So a thug of a celebrated race steals cigars and fists a policeman in the face and struggles to steal his gun causing it to discharge in the policeman’s car. Then for being shot as a result of his rampant lawlessness stores are ransacked and burned and chants are raised in the streets for dead cops “Now!” And dead cops we now have. And the rest of us sit and enjoy our pizza’s and beers perceiving just a new normal. We who pick the mushrooms and pepperoni from between our teeth before brushing the beer off our breath to sleep well at the end of the day are as much to blame for the resulting lawlessness as those who burned their own neighborhoods and marched through the streets chanting for the murder of policemen. We act more like our antediluvian forebears than what God expected of us since them.
-----All of the slackness we’ve made of dispatching blood shedders with haste has been over balanced by the neurotic guarding of our religious doctrines and themes. Any minor anomaly in the body becomes reason to split and form new churches with new doctrines, ever after arguing over things we can hardly know anyway. Various denominations have sprung into existence like the rampant reproduction of infectious bacteria, and have served nothing more than inflaming the world against any consideration of Christ. But I speculate it all goes to show God’s faithfulness to save the few who long for His righteousness more than they claim to know it and to show His justice in mopping up at the end this mess we’ve allowed.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment