Ok so I am not very good with words, and I don't even really know why I want to blog this all out, but I have some things on my heart and just need to get them out, so please finish this blog to the end before you just push it away. This all started yesterday morning when I was watching "The View" during my lunch break at work. I hate to even admit that I was remotely interested in this show, but I had to watch it because our antenna is awful and we only get a couple of stations. So basically it was either a clear picture of "The View" or watch The Price is Right with Drew Carrey and watch it skip every couple of seconds. Luckily I kept watching The View.
I say lucky because they were actually discussing an interesting topic. The guest for the day was Bill Maher from the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher. I had seen him on TV before and thought that he was just a comedian who was just annoying and was constantly trying to be funny. When he first started talking, my assumption seemed to be correct. He kept making dumb jokes and was just being, plainly, stupid. It was really starting to bother me and then all of a sudden the topic switched to religion. Apparently Bill was an atheist and thought that anyone who basically believed in ANY religion was an idiot. He started to poke fun at the story of Noah, and wanted to know how anyone could believe that Noah lived to be 900 years old, or that he got two of every single creature on earth onto a boat he had built, and then convinced them all to have sex and repopulate the earth AFTER it was flooded for forty days. One of the hosts, Sherri Shepard, and yes I did look that up, I did not know who she was, began to shake her head yes to everything Bill was saying about the story(not that she agreed with him, but that she believed what he was saying WAS true). He then questioned her about it, and she said yes that she believed what he was saying was actually a factual story based on real events. Needless to say he did not agree with her. She then began to question him about a couple of things, asking him, “have you ever just talked to God, and asked God what he thinks”, which at the time I thought was pointless because the guy is obviously an atheist, why would he talk to God? He then replied, “the question is, did God talk to you?”, and went on to say that it was just a voice she was hearing in her head and not the actual God of the universe.
It is astonishing to me that people can still honestly say that they do not believe in God. I set down today and thought to myself, “what do people who don’t believe in the Bible see when they look at Christians.” After thinking about this question for a while I started to think about how to someone from the “outside” would look at Christians as basically a bunch of crazy people and hypocrites. People living to 900 years old, birth by a virgin, and all the other miraculous stories in the Bible, I guess to a point I could see how we could seem crazy. BUT…I don’t understand how people can not believe those stories and believe that our universe as massive and as glorious as it is, came together by some random chance, by some kind of chemicals combining at the right time and combusting into what is now our universe. One of the best comparisons I ever heard, was taking apart a watch, putting it in a brown paper bag, shaking the bag up and taking the watch out in a perfect working condition. Some people think it is not the same situation, but if you look at it closely it is. You are taking all of the necessary parts, putting them all together in a close area. The reason that it wouldn’t work is because there must be a creator, just like with the universe. There MUST be a perfect, holy, wonderful God who created all that we see.
I have a set of friends who just had some catastrophic happen in their lives just yesterday. I found out about their situation just a few hours after I had watched the interview with Bill Maher. What happened to my friends is something that I think most of us all fear. But the most surprising thing is how quickly they turned back to God, how quickly they leaned on our loving Savior and how they were able to take comfort and realize that even in their darkest hours, He is holding them in His hands. Does it make the situation easier? No…but, just from talking with my friend, I know that he has a peace about it. I have seen other people go through the same kind of situation who do not have a relationship with Christ, and things would go down hill quickly for them.
The fact of the matter is we must all be yearning for Christ. We must come to the realization that there IS a wonderful savior, who wants to be our comfort, our refuge, and wants to save us from an eternity in Hell. In a book by Rob Bell called Velvet Elvis, Rob says,
“The prophet Isaiah had a vision of heaven, and in his vision angels were shouting, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." The Hebrew word for glory here is kavod, which means weight or significance.”
Rob goes on to talk about how the whole earth is full of the weight and significance of who God is. It is in this that we need to find our strength. In the fact that everywhere we go no matter what we are doing that the God that gave life to all of us is there, whether we want to admit it or not. That He was there when Noah build the ark and lived to be 900. He was there when Mary became pregnant as a virgin, when Jesus fed thousands of people with just a few fish and some bread. He is there when we sin and He is there when we don’t. He is there when someone near and dear to us passes away or when we are stricken with a horrible terminal disease. We must realize first and foremost that He loves us and sent Jesus to die for us.
The next part I learned best from my best friend. After we come to that realization we must take that fact, and love the world. Love the homosexuals, love the liars, love the people that do nothing but put you down, love the people who praise Allah and blow up buildings and buses. We are commanded to love the world period…no matter what…love, love, love. Christians get so concerned with making themselves look good and trying to figure out what makes THEM look like a better Christian, instead of getting REAL with themselves and with others. We are basically too caught up in ourselves. Jesus commanded us to go out and change the world. Not by bashing the sins, but by befriending someone who does not know Him, and then once that trust and friendship is gained, THEN sharing the great and wonderful story of Christ’s life and love. Not in a condemning way, but in a way that reflects Christ. We MUST remember to love. Be an example.
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3 comments:
"It is astonishing to me that people can still honestly say that they do not believe in God."
To put it bluntly, that is a very ignorant assumption to make. There are over 6 billion people that live on this earth, all from different cultures, geographic regions, etc. To believe that everyone should automatically believe in God is not logical. You would have to assume that we are all "wired" and educated in a very similar way, which is just not the case.
I felt like I needed to comment because this is a very common misconception, particularly in the South. I grew up in Seymour as a child, and I was raised in the Methodist church. My family later moved to Powell, where I became agnostic. I did not believe in a higher power. I did not yearn for Jesus. Instead of believing in God, I firmly believed that it was much more important to do "good things", be honest, reach out to others, etc (Confucianist teachings). These fundamentals are common teachings in most major religions and philosophies, and I still believe that they are the glue that holds each church together.
As a teenager, I felt that the local Southern Baptist "scene" was a lot like a an exclusive country club, and I couldn't understand how such large church communities could alienate so many, particularly those who were not Baptists. I resented the church for many years because of this. This is a major issue across the country right now. Many Christians are so obsessed with trying to convert non-believers that they actually push many of them away. One moment that still baffles me was during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Rather than send the majority of their missionaries to help the Gulf Coast victims, many of these churches were sending their missionaries to Africa/Asia/Central-South America instead. That is still something that I don't think I will ever stop scratching my head over.
I studied a countless number of religions (and attended many services) in both high school and college. I knew that there was more to life than god-less philosophy. Until I went through my own growing pains in college, I never would have changed my mind. To answer your rhetorical question, a lot of people do not yearn for Jesus because they feel that they do not need him. That isn't something that can be forced upon someone; only they can come to terms with it.
Today, I am back at the Methodist church again, and I am a firm-believer in God and Jesus Christ. However, what so many Christians often forget is that instead of being obsessed with spreading the Word of God in order to convert the non-believers (or even "shame" them), we must instead look in the mirror and examine ourselves. We must constantly strive to become better Christians, we must attempt to help those around us, and we must embrace all of those around us, whether we agree on religion or not. We must do it because it's the right thing to do.
What I don't understand is why you would sit here and argue against a single statement, I made in my entire blog. Towards the end of your comment you basically began to agree with EVERYTHING else I was saying. This is one of the other things that bothers me about the church. People want to argue and argue and argue over every minute detail, like carpet and a single statement that someone made, instead of focusing on exactly what you were saying at the end of your comment. Going out and sharing love...If you had actually focused on the ENTIRE blog, you would have seen that the overall message, was that we need to LOVE, and not bash people into believing in Jesus. I agree with you completely on the last part of your comment, but am completely confused on what your point is with the first four paragraphs. You seem to contradict yourself. I'm not here to argue that is the last thing I want to do, so if you want a debate find a different blog, but if you want to somehow come together and share as believers I would be more than happy to share with you.
Sometimes people just want to argue for the sake of arguing bro. Great blog and I love your thoughts here. Nowhere in this whole thing did I ever feel like you were desiring for us to "force" God on people. Well, keep up the writing. Comments always make it more interesting!
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