Random Ramblings

I’ll start off today’s post by pointing out that I’ve added two new links to my blogroll. That brings my grand total up to… well. two. :P Secondly, today’s the first of a two part blog that I’ve been wanting to write for a couple of weeks now, but with the server being down and myself being busy beyond all reason, I hadn’t had time to do anything with it. It’s probably going to involve me getting up on the ol’ soap box and preaching a bit, but as rarely as I ever really do that, I’m sure you, good reader, can handle it. :)

A couple weeks ago while at work, my good friend Jim Slagle brought up an interesting question that I’d never really given a lot of thought to: In my 20-some years as a Christian, having been raised in a Christian home, had I ever really questioned whether or not my faith was really true? Jim and I come from two different backgrounds, where I was raised in Christianity, Jim became a Christian in his mid-20s, explaining that he’d been trying to refute Christianity to put his consience at ease but instead he wound up proving it to himself by accident.

Well, to be honest, I’d never given it much thought, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I did have one period where I strongly questioned myself on it. In one of the ultimate ironies, it was actually during my 4 years of Christian high school.

Anyone who knows anything about my high school experience knows that my senior class in particular was more than likely one of the most screwed up in the school’s history. In the 20-some years of Westside Christian High School’s history, I don’t think any other graduating class had one student shoot another the afternoon before graduation. If something crazy happened at that school, the chances are it happened to someone in my senior class.

How I came to the point I’d reached in high school was simple. In spite of being a Christian (supposedly) all of my life, I sort of adopted a holier-than-thou attitude over a few of my classmates. To be honest, for as many Christians as claimed to be in my class, there weren’t that many that seemed to practice what they preached. I can think of only a handful of the 65 who I would considered to be true to what they believed. The rest all seemed to be hypocrites in my eyes, and I must admit, part of me wondered if God existed, why on earth was he letting those people who professed to be Christians yet their words didn’t match up to their actions still breathe? Arrogant of me, I know, but I’d kind of reached a point like C.S. Lewis had after the death of his wife.

Not that I am (I think) in danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is coming to believe such dreadful things about him. The conclusion I dread is not, “so there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God is like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

I was a little confused. I’d begun to think that, if we’re made in God’s image, and that’s the image we’re projecting (hypocritical, arrogant, spiteful, or just plain stupid), then what must God be like? The more I think about it in hindsight, I think what was really deeply bothering me was the same thing that bothers a lot of non-Christians about “Christians”. They began to color all of Christianity as hypocritical because of the hypocritical actions of those professing to be Christians. The fact is, in this day and age, a lot of Christians aren’t living any differently from the rest of the world. “”Burger King Christianity”, as my pastor calls it. We drive up on Sunday, drop our money in the plate, and then go to God with “I’d like a number three, hold the cheese”, and that’s the extent of our Christian life. We don’t let our faith infulence any other part of our lives for fear of offending someone, we don’t read our bibles because it only makes sense if the pastor explains it to us, or maybe it’s just “That old time religion thing’s meant for church, no one should be doing that stuff outside of there.” It’s impossible for Christians to impact the lives of others because we’re not allowing God to impact our lives.

One thing I’m not going to do is get up on the soap box and preach on how horrible everyone who does this is, because the fact is, I’m guilty of some of it myself. If I got a dollar every day that I forgot to, for whatever reason, read my bible, or get up in the morning for church, or pray… Well, I’d have been able to retire last year. Heck, make it a nickel and I’d still have a considerable nest egg saved up. But that doesn’t make it any more right that it happens. Salvation is easy, it’s the Christian life that’s hard, and people want to show up, get church, and get on with their life instead of doing anything for God that, God forbid, might actually please him. No sir, we want the best of both worlds, the ability to go to church and get religion while continuing to live our life as we want it because God doesn’t care what we do outside of church, it’s just showing up on sunday that matters. Or is it?

Tomorrow I’ll (hopefully) get part II up, hope I’ve provoked a few thoughts for the time being and given you something to mull over until then.

~Andrew =)

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