This morning I read an online article by Tara Kelly about a pastor who is calling for a boycott of Starbucks because of the company’s support of a bill that would legalize gay marriage in the state of Washington. She quotes the pastor in her article. “‘Christians are upset with Starbucks for turning against God...Starbucks can follow Satan if they want to,’ Steven Andrew, and (sic) evangelical pastor and president of the USA Christian Ministries in California, said in a statement. ‘However, pastors are to help Christians. Are you on the Lord's side? Will you help the USA be blessed by God?’”
As always, when reading this kind of quote from a Christian, my blood began to boil. My scripture reading for today is the reason my blood boils. In James 2:1-13, James describes the favoritism that is being shown in a local church to those who come to worship. He questions them with these words in verse 4, “Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” He then goes on to instruct them. “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.’ … Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
Somehow many in the Christian community think that our job is to be the “sin police” for God. In their minds we are to look around for those who are not living according to “God’s way”, point out to them and the rest of the world the error of their ways, and let them know they are going to hell. Unfortunately they miss the call of God to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and to judge nothing before the appointed time, when God will judge. I believe that we in the Christian community need to heed the words of James Fenhagen in his book Invitation to Holiness. “The commandments of God have too often been presented in our tradition only as moral precepts by which we can judge our neighbors, rather than as a vision in which the call to holiness is rooted. Our concern is not to have presented to us a blueprint for life that will allow us to avoid risk, but rather a vision of integrity from which decisions are made and life is lived. Similarly, our concern for the Law and the prophetic insight into the power of evil as it operates in the world is not to win God’s acceptance by so-called right behavior, but to know within ourselves the desperate need we have for the grace offered to us in Jesus Christ.” If we recognize our own need we will see ourselves in the same boat as the ‘sinners’ we are lambasting and we will show them love and mercy rather than judgment and condemnation.
Well said.
ReplyDelete