I find myself a little tired this morning, and started thinking about the state of the Christian Church in America especially, but to a lesser extent in other places as well. There are a number of rather polarizing issues floating about that people who identify as Christians have taken strong stances on. The biggest being illegal immigration, homosexuality, and abortion. There are numerous other issues that people-who-call-themselves-Christian key on as well, but those seem to be the big three.
So we have these things: abortion, illegal immigration, and homosexuality. I’ll start at the easy one and go from there. Abortion is something most Christians don’t like. It’s understandable; there are sufficient Biblical statements to easily infer that human life begins at some point in the womb. Nothing specific of course, but inferable. The clearest statement is from an extra-Biblical work called the Didache (also known as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) written in the late 1st Century. In section 2, paragraph 2 it says, “Do not abort a fetus or kill a child that is born.”
Christian teaching, in my understanding, is very clear that abortion is wrong. However, Christian teaching is for Christians, not for everyone else. This is a very important thing for Christians to remember, as our only message to non-Christians should be something on the order of “Jesus loves you, and died for your sin.” We’re not supposed to be all to specific about what that sin is to non-Christians. That is the job of the Holy Spirit. Picketing abortion clinics with signs that say “Burn in hell baby-killer” doesn’t seem particularly loving to me.
Which of course leads into the next thing that people-who-call-themselves-Christian get on a high horse about: homosexuality. Now, and I may catch some flak for this, I believe that the Bible identifies homosexuality as something that is a sin. Of course, so is drunkenness, divorce (in most cases), ignoring people who need help, adultery, fornication, lust, love of money, and countless other things. However, for some reason that is singled out as a sin worse than the others. I quote Jesus in Matthew 7: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Now the messiest of them all, interacting with those who have come to this country illegally. For this little post, I’m choosing to ignore the racial undercurrent in a number of the arguments I keep hearing about illegal immigration and, instead, focusing on two things. First, these people broke the law. There is no denying that. But second, Christians ought to be more concerned with showing love to these people than applying justice. Again, quoting Jesus, this time from Matthew 18: “[There was] a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents [amounting to several million dollars] was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii [amounting to a few dollars]. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown in debtor’s prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailer to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.”
This is likely a bit of a controversial topic, and something that I don’t often get into, but the more I hear things about this topic, the less respect I have for people-who-call-themselves-Christian yet don’t really act it out in their life. Remember that Jesus did a whole lot of things that the religious establishment didn’t like, and it led to his death. I’d rather be identified with Him than identified as a “Christian” any day.