Urban Reformation

I received a note today from a guy who’s on my facebook site.  I log into face book now and again and as they’ve added more stuff, I’ve visited far less frequently.  In fact most of the time it’s a major waste of “Time” of which I’m attempting to work toward being a better steward.  So I there are people who are friends of friends got added who knows how and the note I received was from the brother of a guy I hung around with quite a bit.   The big brother of my friend.  I won’t go into names but when I received this e-mail I remember times in the past and how I used to believe, and think about the things of the world.  I believed much of the way this note reads, and I’m going to share it with you.  Warning some profanity below.

Dude, I’m pretty sure I’ve sent you something along these lines before – but this time I withhold no punches. Aside from my brother and growing up in the same place, you and I clearly have nothing in common. There is no need to pretend we are friends, especially considering I strongly feel people like you are a huge part of what’s wrong with this country, and indeed the entire world.

Wanna know why the Republicans are getting their a$$es handed to them lately? People like you open your mouths and say things fewer and fewer folks can identify with. Wanna know why the pulpit is having a hard time filling the pews these days? Don’t blame Satan. It’s your own fault. I believe the day is coming when this Pauline bastardization of Christ’s message fades away from the collective consciousness. I pray it’s sooner than later.

I’m kicking you off my friends list as soon as I send this. I wish you a spiritually productive lifetime and hope that you infect as few people as possible with your fear of damnation.

Now he’s saying a lot of things that he’s gathered and broad brushed me into a category because I’m a conservative Christian, however I note a couple of things in his note to me.

#1.  I give thanks to God that he transformed my mind, that he took my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh.  Why because I used to think this way, I was liberal in thought mind and every manner of life.  I did not base my “perspective on life” or as Christians have coined, my “worldview” on anything other than the thoughts of my peers, and what seemed right in my own eyes.   I thought for a long time that if people “love” one another it shouldn’t matter, it didn’t have to be that way for “Me” but I didn’t see anything wrong with others having their own thoughts on these things.  I had been “infected” by the world and the thoughts of the “collective conscience” as this gentleman puts it and I was flowing in the river of the world going right along with the stream of the world and where popular thought was taking me.

It wasn’t until God showed me that there is a God, and someone greater than SELF that I must yield my life and my mind toward.  It wasn’t until God showed me my “mortality”  and put the “Fear” of God into my heart did I fall at the feet of God and understand that the way of my own life, and my own choices, lead me to death, literally.

God had to literally reach in and change me, grant me repentance for my pride, and for me to lose the convictions I had for the world like this guy demonstrates. He’s so convinced that his way is the right way he is blinded by his own hypocrisy and pride, no different than I had been. God allowed me to come to the end of my self and my selfishness, at least in part, to be able to see how wretched I truly was on my own.  It wasn’t until this death of self took place in the corridors of my heart and my flesh could I then be born again and my mind and heart be transformed.  This is indeed a miracle.  It’s not often that people completely change their minds, about their convictions in life.

#2.  I don’t get upset with what he’s saying above, for example:

People like you open your mouths and say things fewer and fewer folks can identify with.

There is some truth in the fact that fewer and fewer people can and do identify with the gospel.  They don’t understand the good news.  The word “Gospel” sounds to many lost in these days like some genre of music sung only during Christmas.  The meaning is lost.  And why is it that the meaning is lost?  I would speculate that it is largely lost because the “Christian heritage” that this country once held to has been lost.  The values and principles were at the minimum taught when children were younger even if they strayed when they got older, they could recall being taught in church and Sunday School what sin, punishment for rebellion, wrath, Love of God, Mercy and forgiveness, were all about and they knew deep down often that this was the “right” thing.

Whereas today both parents are working, we are babysat by our televisions, and we learn about life and sex and everything else from cultural media verses being taught by our parents, from the perspective of Christian Values.  We have generation by generation been slowing slipping away from God’s word, and it is the hope of the evil one and all those who are enjoying their sin and rebellion to God as I had been before I was saved.

So what do we do with slander and criticism like this?  I take it, listen to the things that will help me grow.  I know that God is sovereign and that we must listen to these complaints and then learn from them.  They are tools to help us see the pride and hypocrisy in our own lives, and opportunities to examine our faith to see if those on the outside hate us because we believe there is truth, and that truth is absolute in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, or if they hate us because our lives demonstrate something other than Christ as we live it out.

Regardless it’s a reminder to me that I have been changed, and I am so very thankful I do not believe and think and trust in my own self, or my own ideas or thoughts…. they have so often been wrong  or deceptive but there is something greater than myself, and His name is Jesus Christ, and HE is our Hope.

So let me encourage you to not give up on people who think this way, on people with “conviction” against the bible, or Jesus Christ but to pray for them to hold them up to God and ask for mercy that they might too have a Damascus road conversion and be thrown back and spun on their head in their understanding!  may God be magnified by such testimonies and may those of us who have them never forget it was God and not us!

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