Slideshow image

"Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate."

I came across this quote by Rick Warren that articulates what I have been thinking a lot about as of late. Sadly many Christians have bought into these lies, largely fuelled by biographical reasons rather than theological ones. I have heard people say that the church has become irrelevant. My response is on what grounds? Because our beliefs seem to be archaic therefore somehow irrelevant? I think what makes the church irrelevant is when we proclaim something with our lips, and then practice the opposite in our daily lives. It is that kind of blatant hypocrisy that pushes the church further and further into the margins of society - until it no longer has a voice. The other thing that causes the church to lose it's voice is when we make our faith in Christ more and more domestic and tame so that eventually it no longer looks anything like Jesus and what He invited us into. Finally, I think the other thing that causes people to react in this way is when the church has responded so poorly to the tough issues in society, and forgotten that these are people we are talking about here. People for whom Jesus died. Should not our actions and words and tone reflect the very compassion Jesus modelled?

As a result of these three distortions, I wonder is whether many who claim to follow Jesus have subtly traded that faith in for something a lot tamer - something called Moral Therapeutic Deism. Define each of those words and you'll come up with what I believe to be the prevalent belief among Christians in North America. I think what God has available to us in Him is so much more. Not in either extreme camps, but something found in the healthy middle.

More on this topic when Toni dolfo Smith comes to The River and speaks on the delicate issue of homosexuality on May 11th & 12th. Lots of confusion in our culture around this issue. As well as the church. It's one of those issues we need to talk about, and invite Jesus into the conversation. This will be one of the ways we attempt to do that at the River.