“Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!”
James 2:8-13
Sometimes I think Christians are their own worst enemy.
Many so called Christians in the United States seem to be under the delusion that because they have the motto “one nation under God” they are or were at one time a Christian nation. That is not true there has never been a Christian nation on this earth.
I hear those who claim to be Christians protesting against everything they disagree with. They say it is their right under the constitution. That’s true but the constitution is not the inspired word of God.
Christians see many things in the world we disagree with but we shouldn’t be out there protesting. There are many laws that Christians disagree with. Still providing they don’t restrict our rights or the rights of others to practice what they believe, we shouldn’t be protesting.
Both Jesus and the apostles were in a world that had many laws and customs they would not have liked. However they did not protest.
They lived within the laws of the Roman empire and as such were able to change the world.
They never attacked the beliefs of anyone outside their faith. They never spoke against the government of the day. Yet within seventy or so years of Christ’s birth Christianity had reached the entire Roman empire from the British isles to the borders of India.
We as Christians need to realize we are aliens in this world. The apostle Peter saying,
“Dear friends,
I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.
Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.’
1 Peter 2:11,12.
We cannot do this if we are protesting the evils of this world. We only come across as bigoted malcontents and trouble makers.
The apostle Paul set the example as to how we are to evangelise when he was in Athens.
In Athens he was presenting the gospel when some philosophers heard him. He perked their interest and he was invited to speak at the Areopagus the ancient equivalent of an a “Ted Talk” if you will. An intellectual form.
The book of acts states,
“So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.
A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?
You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.”
(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”
At that, Paul left the Council.
A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Acts 17:17-34
This is how we as Christians in the twenty-first century need to be presenting the word of God to the world.
Please think about it.
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