I have a lot of friends in the Fire Service, and spent some time as a Fire Fighter myself, so I don’t want anyone to be offended when I bring this story up. Back East, due to budget cuts, some volunteer Fire Departments have been forced to either charge an advanced fee to receive fire protection, or to shut down the Department all together. Unfortunately, it’s been recorded where a few Departments have responded to a fire, but when they found out the homeowners were not covered, they stood by while the house burned down. Now let’s not get into the right or wrongs of their actions, there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. I bring this up because I consider this to be a fine example of how many Christianslook at non-believers, they better pay for the protection first, or we’ll just watch you burn.
A few weeks ago, I posted a blog written by a young man who had grown up in a Christian family, but turned Atheist. In his blog, he asked a very simple and well put question, “If Christians are so concerned about my spending eternity in hell, why don’t they do more to try to save me from that Hell they describe?” I thought is was a very logical, as well as a Biblical question (I was also impressed with the fact that he was so polite about asking). I was surprised at what I saw when the responses started coming in.
Most of the responses that I saw were rather sharp and angry, blaming him for being in that spot rather than gently and lovingly explaining it to him. Now to an extent, this is true, but it doesn’t mean that we should give up or ignore him when he’s asking for help. I would never want to be known as someone who would turn their back on someone when their Spiritual house is on fire. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is: Matthew 4:19, “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” If you notice in this verse, the key word is a VERB, GO. It doesn’t say, “Let’s tell them about Jesus and let the Holy Spirit do the work. If they don’t respond, then it’s their fault.”
OK, I admit that it may appear that I am angry over this response, but it’s more of a confusion. I cannot understand how anyone can read the story of how Jesus gave His life for us, asked us to do the same, yet be so unwilling to do whatever it takes to see a person come to repentance. The Holy Spirit uses us to do His work, if we sit on the couch and leave it up to Him, then we are letting a lot of people burn.
I see so many other faiths putting Christians to shame in their evangelistic efforts. The Mormon Church is growing at a very fast pace because their followers GLADLY reach out to others and practice what they preach through actions. The Muslim faith is passionate to the point of being fanatical about what they believe, Yet we know the truth, and leave it for someone else to to. To me, this is as much of a betrayal to Jesus as the kiss of Judas. My apologies for being so blunt, but if you’re passionant about something, then you tell it like it is…:)
Pastor Mike Says 