Christian Ironies (part one)
American Christians are nothing if not ironic. Sadly, our ironic approaches to some things gives us little influence with a non-Christian world…and they see through our hypocrisy.
Christian ironies…
1. We complain that prayer is not allowed in school or public forums when we don’t pray much ourselves. (The fact is that you can pray anytime, anywhere.)
2. We pray for more “stuff” but then use the “stuff” God gives us as an excuse to ignore the Kingdom of God and his church. (i.e., Man prays, “God, give me a boat”. God gives boat. Man now spends every Sunday on the lake enjoying his new boat while ignoring his church.)
3. We’re infuriated when someone wants to remove a display of the Ten Commandments but we neither can quote them nor do we understand their purpose. (The only Commandments that most Christians can name are the ones they think they’re not guilty of.) (The purpose of the Ten Commandments is not to establish an orderly society. Their purpose is to indict us as sinners before a holy God and point us to Christ). (The fact is we can’t keep the Ten Commandments – that’s why Jesus came, died, and rose again.)
4. We look down on people who drink, smoke, chew, (fill in your pet sin you like to condemn in others) but our gossiping, complaining, over-eating, anger, bitterness, manipulation, greediness, selfishness, materialism, and possession-hoarding? Not a problem.
5. We decry too much emotional display in church but get frustrated by a lack of emotion at a sporting event.
6. We’re passionately opposed to gay marriage but don’t think that our adultery, porn addiction, live-in arrangement, hookups, or divorce has any effect on the marriage covenant.
7. We encourage our children to over-commit themselves so that they have little time for spiritual things (i.e. church) and/or make church judgmental, condemning, and boring, then we’re shocked when they abandon church after high school.
Maybe church folks should begin with the “plank in their own eye” … just a thought.
More to come.
jackpickel 