Blog

Punching Bags

Some people blame Christians when they turn away from the faith. And Christians happily take the beating. Didn’t it ever occur to anyone that maybe the reason they turned away from the faith is because they consciously made the choice and rejected Christ in their hearts?

It is important that we need to be watchful on how we conduct ourselves everyday to keep the testimony of Christ in our lives untainted. But it is equally important that we don’t beat ourselves unnecessarily for other people’s decisions. Not only because it’s not healthy but because in the greater scheme of things, I believe that God didn’t mean for us to become the world’s blame catchers, fall out guys and spiritual punching bags.

Punching Bags

Some people blame Christians when they turn away from the faith. And Christians happily take the beating. Didn’t it ever occur to anyone that maybe the reason they turned away from the faith is because they consciously made the choice and rejected Christ in their hearts?

Few days ago,  I read a blog post on Facebook about how a certain guy stopped attending a certain church because a certain churchmate was badmouthing him at work. The writer was obviously sympathetic to the guy who is not attending church anymore. He was kind of embarrassed at the failure of the church to act right, causing someone to stumble.

Normally, I would have felt the same. If I were a preacher, a version of that incident might slip a little into my sermons to encourage peopel to live right. But for some reasons, I wasn’t sympathetic this time. I was annoyed big time. Why do they find it so easy to cast the blame on us? And why are we too eager to bear the burden of the blame?

Don’t get me wrong. At one point in our lives, most of us really are to be blamed for people not coming to know Christ because of our un-Christianly actions. But NOT all the time. We need wisdom to know the difference.

In the Bible, there is this interesting character named Demas who consciously made a decision to turn his back on Christ and His cause. Demas was only mentioned three times in the Bible, in Colossians 4:14, Philemon 1:24, and 2 Timothy 4:10 . Paul’s autopsy report of his backsliding was plain, simple and without apologies. He bluntly said that Demas loved the present world more than he loved Christ.

It is important that we need to be watchful on how we conduct ourselves everyday to keep the testimony of Christ in our lives untainted. But it is equally important that we don’t beat ourselves unnecessarily for other people’s decisions. Not only because it’s not healthy but because in the greater scheme of things, I believe that God didn’t mean for us to become the world’s blame catchers, fall out guys and spiritual punching bags.

Appeasing God

PROPITIATION is the act of giving a gift to appease the anger of someone we offended. It’s a term the ancient Greeks used when they want to make peace with their gods.

But of course, that’s an old, old story. Today, nobody really cares about Greek deities, well, unless you’re Percy Jackson, but that’s an entirely different story. Nowadays, nobody does propitiation with any of the characters of Mt. Olympus. What we do is we give “peace offerings” with our wives and girlfriends and mothers whenever we do something stupid. That partly explains why the chocolate and flower industry is still very much alive until today.

Interestingly, when Paul described what Jesus did for us on the cross, he said that God sent Him to be a propitiation for us through faith in His blood (Romans 3:25). I know it’s quite a mouthful but in simple terms, it means that Jesus is the offering that appeased the anger of God towards all the sinners of the world. Consequently, we need not spend lots of money to appease God because Jesus already did it. What we need to do is simply hitch a ride with his propitiation offering.

Two major points to clarify: One, God is not angry with us. Jesus took away (appeased) that anger when He volunteered to die in our place. Two, put your trust in Jesus. Get into Jesus’ good books because you owe it to him. That’s the least you can do to show Him you are grateful.

Discomfort Zone

Obeying God is not always a walk in the park. Sometimes, it’s a flight for your life.

After baby Jesus was born, an angel appeared to Joseph and told him grab his family and flee to Egypt so they can escape the infanticide that Herod was going to order. If you think that story is simple and easy, imagine moving to a foreign country in a hurry. Chances are that you can’t do all the packing in one night, especially if your wife just gave birth to a child and your makeshift house is a mess after you got invaded by a herd of shepherds and philosophers you didn’t even know.

Joseph and Mary’s flight to Egypt was never easy. Was it even safe for a mother with a newborn child to ride on camels and cross the vast desert? Don’t babies need proper air conditioned rooms and soft baby clothes? Didn’t they need to sort out their bank accounts first, consult with the ob/gyn, and manage email forwarding?

Yet they did it all in the name of faith and obedience to the God who knew better than they did. No matter how uncomfortable it might have been. No matter how difficult it was.

Maybe we’re defining faith the wrong way today. I know a number of people who think that faith is getting what you want whenever you need it. To them, faith is like manipulating God to give in to your whims. If you’re not getting things your way, then you lack faith.

I don’t agree with them, of course. If Joseph and Mary’s story is any indication, I don’t think your comfort and discomfort about a certain situation is the true measure of being in faith.