Who Do You Serve?

I was sitting at the intersection of Acworth Due West and Cobb Parkway behind a white Honda Passport. Someone (I suspect the driver) had placed a Jesus emblem stuck above the Honda emblem on the back of the car. As far as emblems go – it was a pretty good Jesus emblem.

Then I saw it – a plain white bumper sticker taped in the back window. There was a simple black and white outline of Ghandi with the words, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” What a stupid, ignorant, absolutely insane, dumb statement. I don’t know if Ghandi really said it or if some classic Hollywood person who idealizes the edgy spiritualism of the east just put it on a bumper sticker. But – someone who identifies himself with Jesus actually put this stupid sticker on his car. Even worse, they probably have no idea how absolutely ridiculous the scenario is. Do you get it? Jesus – God – is the one who said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” So who do you believe in Jesus or whoever said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Is Jesus an idiot? Is God so stupid that we can actually mitigate his instructions and directives? I doubt the driver really meant to counter God’s statements. In fact, to be truly fair, the driver may not even have placed the bumper sticker in the window.

Unfortunately there is a big movement in Christianity (or what people call Christianity) that seeks to “involve everyone” and to be “politically correct.” On one hand it embraces the one who overtly counters Christ and with the other it claims to believe in the very same Christ. My brother worships Buddha and his teachings. In one of our discussions, I politely stated that he did not need to try to make Buddhism and Christianity compatible. He replied something to the effect of, “I was trying to help reduce any confrontation but really in Buddhism there is room for more than one answer. Which is kind of hard to understand but even though they contradict Christianity and Buddhism can both be correct. You just have to get beyond logic and then it begins to make sense.” My brother is no dummy – in fact, he is incredibly intelligent. So are the many leaders that call themselves Christians failing to have the strength to stand and say proudly, “Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.” You know that those words are the words of God.

Instead, these leaders fail to be proud of their faith and its claim to exclusivity. They feel the need to identify with other faiths and traditions. They believe that we will “run off” the world if we are too strong on the fact that “what we believe is right”. They teach the Gospel of Grace but are afraid to tell people that it cost the life and blood of Jesus.

They embrace in their ignorance (can a leader afford to be ignorant?) weak doctrines and do not see the implications of compromising God’s words. Worse than that, most of them don’t even realize how stupid they look at the stop light while the Church and the world wonders “Who do they serve?”