Rape of the Gospel

Last night my friend Jesse, who I have tried vigorously to convert to blogism, taught the study last night at high school beach trip for his church. He talked about the early Church “pre-Constantine” era vs. the Church now. The focus of His message was the importance and essentiality of “community.”

Jesus talked a ton about community, “revolution only happens in community.” It was honestly an awesome study. It was interesting to hear an objective view point that Jesse read. He read an insert from a book entitled "Daily Life in Ancient Rome" which read that the Churches “brotherhood” was what “transformed thousands.” I thought the message was a great call to Christians to live in generous loving community without always holding an agenda of conversion or “evangelism.” The youth pastor closed the evening with a few notes. He asked a question that cleanly snipped the balls off of Jesse’s message, for lack of a better term. He explained that it broke his heart that the students were doing nothing to “change” their community “outside the body of Christ” and then asked the dreaded question; “how many people do you know who would go to Hell if they died tomorrow?” This question once again brought the focus of converting people back to center. Ouch!

Is that what it’s all about? Do we really care more about people’s death than life? I don’t!

We’re constantly focused on symptoms (sorry I’ve used that word a lot). Hell after death is a result of Hell during life. I wrote a post called “starting now” a while back on this subject. If all we care is about Hell when they die what about the people living there now? Cause there’s a bunch of them. There are some people who just lead miserable lives, There are those who don’t know they can be free (read Christine’s post). Have you heard about Darfur? Do we even care about them?

As Jesse said in so many words… The Church is a revolutionary, subversive movement. It is voraciously, ravenously, rapaciously treading toward freedom, toward the freedom that has been paid for by Christ and is, therefore, deserved by everyone living in Hell. It’s a power that cannot be demoralized, intimidated, emaciated, withered or worn out by darkness. It is lead by God and leading toward restoration here, now, within history.