6.16.2009

The Church in Action

I was on craigslist.org the other day trying to find a body shop for my car to repair the massive hail damage from last week. I didn't find anyone trustworthy but what I did stumble across was an advertisement for a group called Center For Inquiry. If you are unfamiliar with this organization, they label themselves as a group driven by atheists, agnostics, free thinkers, and humanists. They discredit (and even at times make fun of) anyone who believes in God because it doesn't make sense to believe in something you can't see or prove exists. This really bothers me a lot, not because they don't believe in God, but because they promote themselves as some kind of "defender of reason" yet they embrace macro-evolution and darwinism with little or no evidence to support their claims. For example, we have never observed, either in nature or in a test lab, cross-species evolution. Yet they believe with 100% certainty that it exists. Sounds hypocritical to me.

Anyway, that's not the point of this blog post. The point is that I believe it's partly our fault as Christians that people get attracted to groups like this in the first place. I know that not everyone who is presented with the truth of Jesus Christ is going to accept Him; but I think sometimes we try to argue or debate with these groups on their level and it hurts us. What I mean is that we often try to prove that Christ is the answer by using apologetics, or coming up with counter-arguments to their rationale. But the truth is you'll never really prove that God exists or Jesus Christ has provided a way to save us from our sins by using these methods because God is not a logical being and doesn't want people to come to know Him through reason or logic. Christ's love can only be observed when it's in action. You can't observe it or study it as a stand-alone entity. If you were a scientist attempting to study gravity or air pressure or magnetic fields, you would only be able to study those things when they're in action! The same is true with Christ and His love; you can only observe it when it's in action.

How can Christ be seen in action? Through us, the Church, selflessly loving each other as Jesus Christ first loved us. When we do that the rest of our community will take notice and, at the very least, wonder why we do what we do.

John 13:34-35
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

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