WHAT THE HECK ARE WE DOING?
Peter declared, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I will never desert you.”
Matthew 26:33 NLT
One of my favorite movie scenes is when Ralphie beats up the bully in A Christmas Story and he’s using all of these terrible cuss-words, only they use all of this made up stuff so they could show it on television and still get a family rating.
Don’t pretend like you haven’t said razzle-frazzle or something else. My friends Michael and Jesse back in Odessa would say “Junk!” in place of a variety of four letter words. I still use that one. Why do we do that? Why not just say what we mean? I’ll tell you why, it’s not because it’s right or wrong, but because we’re not willing to pay the price it would cost if we used the real word.
If you’re a Sunday School teacher you can say “shoot” but I don’t think the Children’s Ed. Director would be too happy if you said what you meant, what do you think? And we live like that, too.
We live slang Christianity.
It’s called religion, it’s not the real thing but you can use it as a cheap substitute because it doesn’t cost near as much.
We don’t identify as much with Christ as we do with our doctrines and standards, that’s acceptable, right?
Why don’t we do this instead?
Let’s live what we mean, get our hands dirty, stain the knees of our fancy suits washing the feet of the world.
My idea of Jesus was a stained glass substitute for who He really is. I realized that so much of what I was doing in the name of ministry was a substitute for really serving the world around me. So much of it was really about me trying to redeem myself and find people who would validate me by agreeing that I was right.
The other reason that many people are cold or even deny Christ is that they have brought everything that they are and offered themselves but have been neglected or rejected because we haven’t really understood how to be the Church.
