dW 08.30.07

scripture

 

1 John 4:1
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

 

thoughts

 

I had an assignment this week to ask 10 people a single question. That question was “who is Jesus?” I found out that “Jesus is the son of God” was a very common response. I had someone tell me that they thought “Jesus taught people about God” but didn’t know if that was right. I had someone else tell me that “Jesus did not exist, in fact Jesus is a myth”. I did a search on the web and found a few quotes I found interesting. The first was an actor who said he used Jesus as a swear word. The other was Martin Luther King Jr who said that Jesus was an extremist for love.

 

This assignment made me wonder what responses I would get if I asked 100 people or more. How many people would say that Jesus did exist or that he did not, that he was a good teacher or that he was the savior, that he is a way to God or the way to God? Then I wondered what sort of definition a “churched” person would give? How much do we know? Does what we “think” we know match what the Bible says about Jesus or is our Jesus someone we internally constructed?

 

Moreover, I wondered why people get uncomfortable talking about religion. Here in the work place the advice can be given that to have a healthy environment one must not bring up religion. Why does religion get the boot? It comes down to political correctness and being PC means that we must divide the secular from the spiritual. During biblical times and even in some modern day cultures there is no such thing as secular. The spiritual is so interwoven with life that they are inseparable. Where would America be if we actually thought of spiritual things as being inseparable from our lives in all aspects thereof? A little more pointed, how might we as the church live differently?