We are not acting like Christ.... therefore we are not acting as Christians should.
I have been on a journey, at the heart of this journey is trying to understand why the "Religious Right" ever became a thing. Why is it that evangelicals have become a voting block? Not and just any voting block, but one that when things don't go our way we claim persecution. Why have we deemed ourselves responsible to legislate our nation's morality? Why is it that young people and millennials are leaving the church en masse?
We (the church) have played a dangerous game by stepping into the "World's" operating system of legislation, law suits, and power.....and it is killing us! Evangelicals have thought; because of the cultural and sexual revolutions of the 60's and SCOTUS cases of the 70's like Roe vs. Wade (or more modern ones that I don't even want to touch) that we need to be more in control of what is happening in our nation and if we don't stand up to protect our rights we will be living in a nation of extreme depravity, far from God, and become an irrelevant voice....which we kind of have... WHY? Beacuse we are operating as the world, not like Christ ... who calls us to meekness.
I have been reading The Cost of Discipleship By Bonhoeffer as some nice light reading when I came across this quote and teaching on the one of the Beatitudes; he wrote
"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." This community of strangers possesses no inherent right of its own to protect its members in the world, nor do they claim such rights, for they are meek, they renounce every right of their own for the sake of Jesus Christ. When reproached, they hold their peace; when treated with violence they endure it patiently; when men drive them from their presence they yield their ground. They do not go to law to defend their rights, or make a scene when they suffer injustice, nor do they insist on their legal rights. They are determined to leave their rights to God alone - non cupidi vindictae, as the ancient Church paraphrased. Their right is in the will of their Lord - that and no more. They show by every word and gesture that they do not belong to this earth.
