Recklessness

This post will be a bit more personal. I should have seen this coming, and I suppose I should be thankful that the extent of it is emotional pain, and not physical suffering as so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ experience across the world for their lack of compromise.

When Paul told us to not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, I think he meant it. He also meant it when he said to return evil with good. What a struggle this is, to live by God's word, and to not compromise or stand by idly when we hear someone twist it. I've been thinking a lot recently, I am going to have everyone hate me, against me, and will have so many people not want to speak to me any more if I continue to talk like this. And yet more and more I run into Christians having a distorted view of the world, and it gnaws at me, and I cannot remain silent. So, I don't. And I anger people. I have been reading and studying the Bible, and several other books on these views that I have writing about in this blog. Almost nonstop. I consult the Bible on every whim I have. And there it is - plain and simple, telling me that what Jesus stood for is in huge contrast to what the vast majority of mainstream Christians today stand for. So I cannot remain silent.

For this, I am screamed at. Blown off. Or even worse, ignored. It's amazing that those who treat me this way are not atheists or people of another faith - they are Christians. I am a searcher of truth. I have been for a long time. And it is even more amazing that I am being treated in the same way by the same people as two years ago, when I considered leaving the Christian faith for another. Now I am trying to follow the Bible by its word, and I receive the same treatment. Amazing.

I will leave with you some words written by the Danish priest, Kaj Munk, in 1944, just before he was killed by the Gestapo:


"What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: "Faith, hope, and love"? That sounds beautiful. But I would say - courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature... we lack a holy rage - the recklessness which comes from the knowlege of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth... a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God's earth, and the destruction of God's world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killings of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish... but never the chameleon."