At various times in my life, I have been presented with global statistic information for the purpose of demonstrating how materially fortunate I am as a middle-class, well-educated American citizen. I am referring to things like... "if you make $20K or more/year, you are more wealthy than 75% of humanity," or "if you have a college degree, you are better educated than 85% of the human population." I am sure you have all been exposed to data like that, and I hope you have some sense of our fortunate status in the world.
Blessings and curses are quite often two sides of the same coin. Obviously, it behooves us to rejoice in our blessed state and be ever thankful to God, the Provider of all. On the other hand, we must also carefully consider how such blessings might produce a negative result.
We are all familiar with the concept of a "spoiled" child. The typical scenario involves a child who is given "too" much. The end result being a weakened work ethic, a lack of natural gratitude, and an over-functioning sense of entitlement. These are not qualities that we wish to acknowledge in ourselves.
Where in the world would one expect to find spoiled Christians? Would it not be in the places where a very disproportionate amount of the world's resources are found? Is there any reason why we, as American Christians, should not look long and hard at ourselves, looking for signs of spiritual corruption?
Jesus stated that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. If we look at humanity from a global perspective, can we avoid the conclusion that Jesus has us in view? I don't think we can. It would be false to think Jesus has only millionaires or billionaires in view.
In the well-known Parable of the Sower, Jesus speak of seed that grows quickly, but is eventually choked out by weeds/thorns. There is no way, if I am honest, for me to avoid seeing myself in this analogy.
We are talking about constraints to the Holy Spirit's presence in our lives. These are some initial thoughts that come to mind as I try to understand the disparity between the experience of early Christian (as recorded in Acts) and my present-day experience.
What do you think?
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Cultural Constraints
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2 comments:
I think this is a great post and I agree with you. If I were to allow myself to speak freely, I would come across as sounding like an anti-American or something.....of which I am not. I just simply prefer the way things use to be when America was first founded.....in that it was all based on scripture. If God was in it, it was bound to fail.
I think we're all spoiled now. We have no idea what real persectution is like. I'm both glad and saddened by this. Growth appears to happen through struggling to survive.
Jennifer
In some sense, American Christians tend to be corrupted in a sense that we are creatures of familiarity and comfort. I think that's evident in our reaction to the un-churched - not in our official outreach efforts but rather in how we personally reach out and include others. For example what would happen if a known drug dealer showed up at church on Sunday, or if a known prostitute showed up or ___fill in the blank to any other group that's "sinful". Our minister here in Gallipolis spoke about this yesterday.
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