Love? Jesus says so!

Yesterday I was talking to my dad about what I call a Political Gospel. He pointed that I have become just a little bit too quick to point faults in the church and I forget what Jesus really says.

"But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "You shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. on these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."
Matthew 22:34-40

"One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?" Jesus answered, "The foremost is, Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is n other commandment greater than these."
Mark 12:28-31

Loving each other the way that Jesus loved us is our calling! This I must say may be the hardest of all our callings. After we begin to know Jesus its not very hard to love him with a little bit of faith but to love everyone in the world the way Jesus loved us is way harder and much more complex. However, Jesus came here not to just die for our sins and save us but also to give us a model of how to live Godly lives. He teaches us how to be Christ-like. I hear all the time that of course Jesus' life is our model but there is no way we can ever reach that model. I have to say that not only can we reach it but that is what we are to strive for. See it makes no sense that Jesus would come and teach us something that is impossible for us to reach. I believe that we can and should strive to be as the model set forth by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Political Gospel

This Sunday at College Wesleyan Pastor Steve used the phrase "today in America." I have been going to College Wesleyan for 11 years now and that phrase is about as political that Pastor Steve will ever get from the pulpit. However, every time I turn on my TV i see some Pastor making the news for some controversial material he presented in his sermon most of the time the material presented is 100% political and has little to do with the Christian message at all!

Growing up in a christian home I was taught to listen to my pastor. I was taught that a pastor is someone who I could look up to and go to for advice. My pastor was supposed to be a Godly man. For the most part of my life I have never had a pastor that wasn't any of these things. A pastor is called to the pulpit by God to preach scripture the way he understands it through extensive prayer, tradition, and his education in general. But when I see these pastors all over the country preaching this political gospel I can see why the church is slowly dying with this country. The parishioners of these churches take this political gospel to heart and begin to think just as these pastors do and the rest of us look in on them and say if that's what Christianity is all about I don't want any part of it.

I think that the church will survive and thrive in this country but because of pastors and anyone who buys into this political gospel are not going to take over the church and they aren't going to kill it either. They are bringing about the end of Christendom.

I am not all sure that loosing Christendom is all bad. In fact I believe its more good than bad. Christianity was never meant to rule the world, God was! So the end of Christendom is only the end of the Christian supremacy in the world. I think that without the Christian supremacy we as Christians can get back to preaching the Gospel in the manner that it was meant to be taught. We can get back to Jesus. We can get back to the Death and Resurrection. Under the right teaching and studying of the Scripture the Church could prosper as a whole once again.

I want to make it clear that I am in no way preaching against the church. I am the first one that says we need more Church and less Individualism. I am only pointing out that the perception of Christians is because the Christians that are getting attention are the ones that are preaching this political gospel.

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
John 3:17

"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does."
2 Corinthians 10:3