Have you ever felt completely out of control...? I'm not talking about being on a roller coaster or in an airplane, or anything else physical. I'm not even talking about thoughts in my head, my own sin, or any personal struggle that is difficult to change. I'm talking about the actions and words of others. I'm talking about the actions and words of those who are suppose to be the leaders of your faith. Have you ever felt this chaos...?
I don't know what else to do. I have struggled with Christian leadership (so called Christians anyway) in the United States for years now. It slowly goes over the top. The latest comments made by Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition toward President Chavez of Venezuela have incited a shame in me I can barely contain.
I can separate myself from from Mr. Robertson's comments easily on a personal level, but it's nearly impossible to separate myself on an institutional level. I have worked, and in fact fought to separate myself from the institution of Christianity as it is generally represented in the U.S.A. Unfortunately, I call myself Chritian. Pat Robertson calls himself a Christian. This is difficult for me. Of course, maybe Mr. Robertson made a mistake, maybe it was just an off hand comment taken wrong my the liberal media. I don't know.
I'm struggling with this one right now. I suppose the best thing to do is to continue on fighting for light, fighting for love, fighting for Jesus. It's still a struggle when the very people I want to love, the very people I care for, are the same people who tell me that they would rather not be Christians if being a Christian means being like Pat Robertson. Ouch. What do you say..? Fortunately, I understand who it is to follow. I hope others will too - not a man anyway.
2 comments:
I TOTALLY agree with you. There are so many people who call themselves Christian, but very little things in what they say or do show that they really are.
And it's in so many different forms. This is a good example, but I also think about Mila's school (a Christian school) where she is about the only Christian teacher in a team of 15/ 20. And more: the 'board' is in favour of skipping one of the Christian holidays in favour of a muslim holiday (e.g. the end of ramadan).
If you do that on a non-Christian school it's okay, I guess. But I don't thinks these things go very well with saying that you're a Christian.
The general idea (at least in Holland) is that you must do everything you can to show that you respect the believes of others. I think we've gone too far in that. It's gotten to a state where we cannot (or no longer want to) say what we stand for.
But back to your post: it feels a bit 'helpless' (maybe even 'useless'?) that we do our best to be a 'good Christian example', when people like that can destroy they image we try to create with one comment like that.
But... do we really do our best. Can others really see Jesus' life reflected in/ through us?
This is one the things I'm going to study and think about a lot the coming weeks.
Yeah Michael. That's the thing. I guess it throws me for even more of a loop when I consider myself as the "PROBLEM" as mentioned in a previous post on my site.
I have to consider my witness in the big scheme of things and that too can be chaos. So, I ask the same questions to myself... when people look at my life, do they see someone following Christ...? or following himself...?
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