Posts Tagged: jesus

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20
Aug 08

Gregory Boyd has it right!

I follow a lot of what is going on in the church today, particularly here in America. One thing I am getting tired of is church leadership slandering other church leaders. At the center of a lot of this is political. Take a look at the forum Rick Warren hosted last weekend at Saddleback Church here. One of the things I admire about Pastor Gregory Boyd of Woodland Hills Church in Minnesota is that he gets it and isn’t afraid to talk about it.

As Christians we should be focused on the work of the kingdom of God and not about promoting political candidates or political agenda. Is it our job to polarize Christians through our political positions or are we to show the world that it is through love that others will know we are Christ followers as in John 13:34-35.

In his blog, Boyd comments:

“In my view, followers of Jesus are to be concerned with everything Jesus was concerned with – and Jesus was obviously concerned with more than people having a relationship with himself.”

What are some of those things? Well, for one Pastor Boyd speaks about racism:

Jesus revolted against racism by the countercultural way he treated and spoke about non-Jews , so his followers are to revolt against all forms of racism.”

Boyd states that, “Jesus was a revolutionary on social issues, so his followers are to be revolutionaries on social issues.” However, he concludes with these profound remarks:

Jesus was a radical social activist, so his followers must be the same. It’s just that Jesus never once placed any trust in the government of his day to address social issues. He rather just addressed social issues by how he lived and taught. So too, we who are Jesus’ followers are to place no trust in government to address social issues. We’re simply called to address them by how we live.

Following Jesus’ example, we’re to place our trust in the power of the cross – the power of self-sacrificial love – not the power of the sword. We’re to trust the power of Calvary, not Caesar. And this is why I believe those who spend their time and energy trying to control the political arena “in Jesus’ name” are profoundly missing the point. Our job is to love, serve and sacrifice for sinners – not argue about passing laws against them. For we are to know that, whatever sin we see in others, our sin is much worse (Matthew 7:1-3)”

Obviously there are many that refute what Pastor Boyd speaks about. However, isn’t the scripture clear on this that Jesus called his followers to be examples of their faith? If we live by the sword we die by the sword. If we live by love, we are keeping with the Greatest Commandment and it is through our love that world will know we are Christians.

Here is some video of Greg Boyd speaking on this a bit for the CNN series God’s Warrior’s:
[youtube]e22TOmFVswI[/youtube]

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8
Aug 08

Osteen trial began yesterday, the vomit has already started

Well, as I posted yesterday, Victoria Osteen is being sued by a Continental Airlines flight attendant over verbal & physical abuse and the subsequent emotional distress of it all (click here for more of the story from cnn.com). The question being raised now is what importance does Osteen’s payment of a $3,000 fine from the FAA bear on her being guilty of the charges? Osteen says nothing happened on the flight and that the flight attendant (and other witnesses) are confused about what they remember. She claims that she paid the FAA fine just to be done with the incident and to avoid embarrassment to Lakewood Church–it was not, she contends, an admission of guilt.

So, now it’s not just how she supposedly acted on the flight over not getting a stain on her seat the size of a 50 cent piece removed quickly enough, but now people are coming out and blasting her over not being truthful about the incident.

It’s all over the news, and here is a comment to a post about this from another blog site:

There is nothing frivolous about this case, and the wife is a liar. This case isn’t about the stain on the seat. The Preacher’s Wife pushed and injured the flight attendant. The wife was fined by the FAA for her conduct and she paid it, an obvious admission that she was, in fact, disorderly and combative with the flight crew. So here it is: the FAA fined her and she paid it. If she didn’t do it, then she lied by admitting it and paying the fine. Christians shouldn’t lie. Christians who do not follow their rules are crummy Christians. Therefore, the wife is a crummy Christian. The Bible doesn’t say only tell the truth when it is easy, and lie to be expedient. Either it is right or wrong to lie, no exceptions, no shades of gray.
My problem with Christians isn’t what they believe, it’s that they don’t believe what they say they believe.

Again I say this, regardless of who we are we are going to be put under scrutiny from those outside of the kingdom of grace. We can sit around and claim foul all day long or choose to ignore such things because we know God gives us mercy through his grace, but then why do we have examples of Jesus calling us to be different? Through his 3 year ministry he was faced with tremendous scrutiny and the Pharisees were just following him waiting for the opportunity to get him arrested. He never slipped up and was finally arrested on a claim of blasphemy and this required help from someone within his inner circle who betrayed him (Judas).

It’s time we took responsibility for our actions and right or wrong, we should hold onto our character and admit our shortcomings and ask for grace. Are we here for self-preservation, or are we here to bring glory to the one who saved us from eternal death? Remember, it should be all about Christ and never about us. Let us remember all that Jesus endured on his way to the cross so that we could stand here today and profess him as Lord and follow the path of righteousness in honor of his ultimate sacrifice for humanity.

PS. None of my comments are intended to incriminate or judge Mrs. Osteen. I only draw attention to the event of her trial as a means to shed light on the judgment that comes upon us if and when we do things that may cause us to fall short in the eyes of others and why it is important to consider the ramifications of our actions more seriously as the eyes of the world (and God) are upon us.

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