It is important for us who follow Christ to remember this fact: We are in the minority and we have always been in the minority. Unfortunately, we have thought we were a majority religion in America and that led us to adopt a laissez faire attitude toward sharing our faith in the power of the Holy Spirit and the healing grace of His love.
I have enjoyed my many trips to Asia, Africa and Europe where my minority faith is obvious. The Christ Followers are very much aware of their need to share the good news and to witness in love and good works. Humility is demanded in such places.
It is also obvious in most of those places that life in a society without Christ and Christian values is harsher for its citizens. Family relations are less wholesome and an attitude of "love thy neighbor" is rare. We tend to think that Socialism's impact will be primarily economic but in Russia and Eastern Europe the loss of love and mutual caring have been the greatest losses.
When the USSR started to cataclysmic fail in the late Eighties, Mr. Gorbachev sent his ambassador to Norway a message. "Ask the Norwegian Bible Society to print a million Bibles in Russian and send them to us." Why would he,a confirmed atheist, do such a thing? The ambassador said, "We have discovered that without a biblical and Christian foundation the people will not be motivated to care for each other. We need the Bible again."
Is the USA ready to not only lose our economic freedom but also our tradition of "Love one another"?
Gary Sweeten
2 comments:
Good question, one thing for certain...if it is lost, we will be able to separate the agape love from the tradition.
The wheat gets separated from the chaff pretty quickly. My friend just returned from The Sudan and the stories of grace, love and power under duress are incredible. We adapt to our environment don't we?
Post a Comment