“I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished! Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
Luke 12:49-53
I have always found the Bible to be a single unified document with a single overarching message about who Jesus is.
...If they don’t want to hear the Christian message,
...they are not Christian.
If The Holy Spirit is not within them,
rejoicing in His Word and embracing His Commandments,
welcoming Correction of our sinful natures,
Then they have not been Baptized in Christ,
or the are in Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (worse)
Oh but we do fret and try and try...God is not mad at you, he never left you. You cannot fall overboard only on-board. He's about love, grace and fellowship. No rules, judgment and condemnation.
I’ve said for decades that the most intolerant man to ever live is Jesus. I say that as a strong Christian. He was the first to say, and I paraphrase, “My way, or the highway.”
Frankly, I’m surprised to read this in the Christian Post. They’ve become something of a liberal rag.
Most Christian Churches aren’t cowards, they just don’t want to interrupt the money train that funds their massive multi-million dollar “campuses.”
A bigger problem with today's Christianity is its joylessness.
We are supposed to exude joy. Have joyful countenances. Speak joyful words. Then when people say, "What are you so happy about?", you set the hook.
Jesus "confronted" sin by forgiving the sinner. The prostitute whom the men of town wanted to stone. The tax collector He invited Himself over to dinner with.
The very people who tortured Him, who mocked Him, who insulted Him, who gave Him vinegar to drink, who stabbed Him in the side with a a spear, who tossed dice for His Clothes, who deserted Him as hung there dying.
Haranguing and browbeating and lecturing obviously isn't working. It's like Socialism. It SOUNDS like it should work. Maybe we just haven't tried enough of it.
We keep insisting that other people change the their behavior when we should be changing our own. Try smiling at someone today. That grouchy grocery clerk. That jerk who just stole your parking spot. That idiot FReeper who just told you to FOAD.
Or the doofus who just told you to express joy whether you have a reason to or not.
That is all. Flame away. I am ready to forgive you.
Amen! Preach on! Time for Christians to stop being meek and mild and put on the helmet of Charles Martel, Tancred of Taranto or Sancho VII "the Strong" of Navarre--great Christian warriors who prevailed over the Muslims.
Well, you have an ancient caretaker of Christianity in the Roman Catholic Church, and the leadership of that caretaker isn't certain that permanent core beliefs are still enduring. What is a follower to do?
“Walsh contended that Christians are not “forfeiting love” by confronting sin.”
People have forgotten the concept of “tough love”.
bump
Certainly absolute tolerance is not a virtue. In Revelation Jesus condemns the Church at Thyatria saying: Revelation 2:20 (ESV): But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.
“I think Christianity has always been a warrior faith. [N]ow Jesus is often portrayed as being this peacenik-hippie type of figure. But if you actually read the Bible, particularly the Gospels, you'll find that’s not who Jesus was,” Walsh explained.“Jesus is obviously loving. But in that love, He confronts sin... He resists the tide of the culture... And we need to... be willing to do that.”
I’m glad the Lord took Paul up to Heaven for lessons. I know I would not understand Jesus very well without the explications the Lord gave through Paul.
Paul’s layout of the gifts and fruits of the Spirit make the Sermon on the Mount do-able. Otherwise, not so much. Because those precepts are even harder than Moses’, if attempted in the flesh.
And Paul gives the lie to “tolerance” as it is being palmed off today as “social justice”. Paul says “Let me tell you about your ‘Unknown God’”; he says to his protege, “reprove, rebuke, exhort”; and he says to all of us, “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darness, but rather reprove them”, and to “Fight the good fight of faith”. These are hardly the sharpton/jackson/obama version of tunnel-view-social-justice-Christianity.
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Thank you.