Wednesday, January 18, 2017

The Fog


This is part of a series I'm writing this year called 'The Other A-Z of Christianity'.
In most A-Z lists of Christianity you'll find that 'J' is for Jesus, 'F' is for faith, 'S' is for sin or salvation and 'A' for atonement.
What I want to do in this series is to go a little deeper and write about some topics that don't always get top billing but are still important.





C. Community

Community, family, fellowship, call it what you will, but at the end of the day it has become the unwilling casualty in a world gone mad.

We live in a world that's destroying itself, not through global warming but through the global war to be in control, to be the one who's right, to be the one who others look up to. We've become a society where selfishness is applauded, where money can buy you anything and where the right to own a gun is more important than the right for every human on the planet to have a regular healthy meal.
We've become a world where community has become little more than a dim light in the fog of selfishness.
And to make things worse, this fog has crept into some niches of the Christian church.

We, as Christians, need to take a good look in the mirror. Not our own fragile fogged-up mirror, but Gods fog-free mirror, the Bible. Trouble is, we've managed to fog up that as well with our own selfish, comfortable, naïve theologies that put us on a pedestal instead of God.
We need to drop the chains of theology and very simply do what Jesus said....'Follow me.'
Follow his example of love, selflessness, compassion, mission and prayer. Jesus 'power' came through submission to the Father. We try to do it the other way, to get our power by having others to submit to us.

It saddens me that people have become nothing more than pawns in the power plays of the powerful. And I'm not just talking about politicians. I'm talking about everyday people, you and me, who, in our own selfishness seek to get our own way in any given situation.
What we need to do is step back and let God have his way.
Each of us needs to let Gods love, grace and wisdom be our guiding light in every situation.

When we let the warmth of Gods love shine through then the fog of  our selfishness will fade away and communities will, once again, flourish as God intended.

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