My family and I are spending 5 days in Seattle for a family vacation currently. We arrived today and have spent most of the day wandering the wonderful city.
Tonight happens to be a special night in Seattle. Once a year there is a summer parade that goes through 4th Street starting at 7:30 pm. Thousands of people gather from all over the West Coast to see this parade and advertise businesses and sell foods and drinks and socialize. It's a wonderful time. (Personally, I'm no parade guy, so I'd rather sit in my hotel room with my brother and blog). This is also a perfect chance for people to witness to others and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with one another, in the worst way.
As my family and I walked down 4th Street to see everyone set up in their chairs and blankets waiting for the parade to start, we begin to see these people holding very large, very bright signs with Scriptures and other Christian-like sayings written on them.
"For the wages of sin is death."
"All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God."
"We will all be judged by God."
"Judgement day is coming, are you ready to be judged?
"Sinners who don't repent go to hell."
"Run from your hell-bent life of sin and come to Jesus."
"God will destroy those who don't repent."
And many, many, many more.
As I'm looking at these signs I can't help but feel so disappointed. I feel so bad. I feel like those who are reading the signs are being let down. I feel like we're failing.
Is holding signs that scare people into loving Christ what we are coming to? Is our interpretation of sharing the gospel telling people that if they don't repent God will damn them to hell? Is that really what Christ would have preached? Is that how we are to love others? Is that really how God wants us sharing His Son with others?
Scaring people into loving Christ doesn't lead them to a faithful relationship with Him, if they even convert. Seeing a sign that says that some God is going to damn them to hell for not loving Him doesn't seem too attractive. Christ went up to people and healed them. Loved them. Made them new. Spoke love into their lives. Shared new teachings with them. Cared about them. He didn't say, "Follow me or be damned, the choice is yours." If we want people to fall in love with Jesus then we need to be reflectors of who He is. We need to act like Him and love others like Him, not preach an aggressive, attacking, and demeaning message that makes them have an altered/incorrect view of Him and a hatred for Him.
We represent Christ by saying we are believers, and when we reveal Him to be some God that hates people who don't follow Him, we are misrepresenting and ruining His name.
Live a life that represents who Christ is, and people will love Him for who He is.
VERY Good! That is so true and so many Christians do that, but the key is in making relationships with others and not turning them away. These people who are doing this need to Love others instead and not scare them into accepting Christ(The only way to deal with them is to love them).
ReplyDeleteBottom Line: We need to LOVE others to bring them to Christ; Who wants to follow a grouch?
What they say may be true, but without love then they will never get their point across to others.
1 Corinthians 13:1
If I speak in the tongues
of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
Exactly. All other things are useless if they don't follow love first.
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