Blindfolded: Part II

This is part two. What makes part two become part two, it is the fact that there is a part one. Part two will make much more sense if you include part one.


In the other section i talked about that mission trip in Honduras were we came together and shared our junk, and how through that i truly felt that the gospel had meaning for one of the first times in my life. What if, this was how we related to people who don't know Christ. What if we had an understanding of what grace and mercy truly are. Paul did. I just got a lesson in that several weeks ago from a tshirt. I was at Pine Cove helping set up for camp. I loved that week and one of the fun parts for me was looking at every one's shirts, trust me, when you get several hundred college christians together, you get a lot of interesting shirts. So i saw this one guy who's shirt had with the name 'Scum of the Earth Church' on it and i just thought it was interesting but didn't give it much thought. Well a few weeks latter i was reading through 1 Corinthians for the first time, and i kinda learned something about God and the church by accident.
'We have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.' 1 Cor 4:13b
This is how Paul ends his description of his fellow apostles. All of a sudden that cute shirt i saw was laden with some thick truth. I may be guilty of miss applying this scripture but it seems that instead of thinking of ourselves as better than everyone, maybe we should humble ourselves. Maybe we should check our pride at the door of our daily lives. I can't say what this looks like for everyone, but for me i can think of so many things in my life where i failed at this that it hurts. It's so lame to think i missed it so many times, but I'm trying to do better. It's not easy and if you have ever been around me you'll know how much i struggle with this.

Have you ever tried to love someone that isn't as good as you. Or, have you ever tried to relate to someone who has messed up where you haven't. If you are like me, probably not cause if you really believe that those previous statements are true then you are probably not in a place to try to love other people. When i was on that mission trip and we were all open about our junk, it became so easy to love and relate cause we were all on the same level and we weren't being fake and focusing on putting up walls of happy faces. instead we were too busy trying to figure out how to live life to bring the God who chased after us glory. So this part about being on the same level brings up a good point that i believe is essential to learning how to live out the gospel in a broken world. Once again Paul says it quite well,
'As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you use to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings or our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions, it is by grace that you have been saved.' Eph 2:1-5

When you understand this, and you understand that everyone human has at some point been disobedient and it is only by grace that God showed us mercy, HOW CAN YOU THINK YOU ARE BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE! The only difference between me and joe six pack is that i am on the right side of the blood of Christ, in the form of a free gift that i did not and cannot earn.

I just wish christians would just sit down and listen to people. Maybe somewhere in that conversation we would find out why that person is the way they are, chances are most people don't plan on drug abuse or becoming addicted to sex. I bet we would learn a lot. I bet somewhere in there we could talk about some of our junk too. Then maybe we could build a friendship built on 'common junk sharing'. Maybe in the mist of the friendship that person would ask us how we could over come our junk. We could talk about how Christ helped us put our lives back together and how its not easy but its better, its not a quick fix but its better than chasing the world. And we could do this without shame cause there is nothing to hide, instead of condemning that person we actually tried living life with them, in the same way Jesus would. This doesn't mean we condone their sin. Not at all, but we share common ground. I bet that would be the first time that person had ever met a christian who didn't look down on them or write them off. I wonder what this looks like when some of our churches now include weight rooms, book stores, cafes, coffee bars, and athletic facilities. What an awesome way of being the arms and feet of Christ, building walls so that we don't have to mix with the unchruched. No wonder we are the butt of jokes on tv. Come to our church and you wont ever have to be around anyone who is different and might make you live out your Christianity. No wonder we think we can only tell people about Christ on mission trips far away from home. I'm pretty sure that the Bible says 'to be in the world not of it', but not 'be in the world only while driving to chruchcityUSA'. Our sports teams need christians, our schools need christians, our coffee shops need christians, our businesses need chirstians, we have to live life with people. Not because we are better but because if we don't, how will they know? By no means am i saying that God is limited in how he moves, i just think that the 'unfixed' are much more likely to come to know Him when i can live out my life with them, together.