Well, May 21st came and went, and no rapture occurred? What are we still doing here? We were promised by a Christian radio station owner, Harold Camping, that May 21st was the big day! Jesus was coming back to take his followers away, and everyone else was going to be left in a sink-hole of devastation. But alas, this did not come to past. While the world waited with baited breath for this latest doomsday prediction to fall flatter than a bad souffle, some well-meaning folks from a local independent church placed a tract in my door, which proclaims that I had better hurry up and "accept Jesus as my personal savior" OR else I was going to join so many other lost people burning in the fires of hell. I am not sure where to begin.
Brothers and sisters, hear me clearly, these well-meaning but misled folks are giving Christianity and the church a black eye. They make us look bad. When they do this stuff, it reflects poorly on Christ's followers. We need to stand up against this poor theology and narrow thinking so that the world knows that not all of Jesus' followers are lumped in with these charlatans. When Harold Camping and his end-of-the-world group go coast-to-coast spreading this false message, and purchase billboards in major U.S. cities (I guess they didn't feel charitable enough to warn foreigners of the coming apocalypse) they make Christians look like cheap sideshow carnival barkers, saying any ridiculous thing for attention. Harold Camping no more knows the date the world will end then I know the proper ratio mix for rocket fuel. How do I know? Because Jesus, the same Jesus who told us He would come back, told us in Matthew 24:36-44 that no one, not even Jesus knew when God's kingdom would arrive. That is why we were encouraged to be watchful; to not sit back and just wait. Harold Camping is making us look like foolish prognosticators who selfishly search for hidden codes and secret numbers that will give us the inside track to eternity. That is not our role. Our role as Christ-followers is to spread love, hope, joy, forgiveness, mercy, grace, and on and on. We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus to this hurting world, not to be a kooky fortune teller throwing out cheap predictions for a dollar. You now have to work even harder to spread grace and love to this world, to counteract the eye rolling and pitiful glances this self-centered act will cause.
And then we have the tract people: folks leaving little slips of paper in public restrooms and on restaurant tables, and handing them out on street corners on the plaza. Could anything be more antiseptic and impersonal then a person who doesn't have time to get to know you and learn about your life so they will just drop a poorly worded, cheaply printed piece of paper behind to tell you about how wonderful and fantastic God is? Except, the piece of paper doesn't proclaim God's beauty and love, it states emphatically that you, whoever has picked up this left-behind-piece-of-paper, are certainly condemned to a life burning in the fires of hell forever and ever if you don't drop to your knees right now and beg, BEG God to forgive you - HURRY before it is too late and you are left staring up from the pits of sulphur for eternity at all of us good people who are sipping lemonade in the halls of heaven, feeling grateful we weren't you. Tracts boil God down to a festering, malevolent punisher who is out for blood. And that is not the God I know and love. You can not get across the love and peace and hope you receive from a wonderful, caring, creative God through a piece of paper left behind. It takes personal contact, personal involvement, and personal sharing to let people know about the God who has touched and changed your life. If you want to tell people about Jesus; tell them what His love and example meant to you. Tell them about the grace and mercy you have encountered in some of your worst times; about the peace and comfort you have felt when in the midst of struggle. To do that takes commitment and relationship, two things that tracts eliminate. Get to know people, listen to their story, share moments of life with them, and then the words of salvation and restoration carry much more weight and impact.
Go out today and live your life like someone who knows what forgiveness feels like. Live your life like someone who has felt mercy and love. Live your life like someone who is trying to be like Jesus, reaching out to the hurting, the searching, the least of these. We will draw many more people to God's love and grace by living like this than we ever would through half-baked predictions or little scraps of paper. When we do these things, when we live our lives like a people of God, when we try to walk in the steps Jesus left us, we become a shining light to a dark world.
Remember, God Loves You,
Mark