“That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel... For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes…” (Romans 1:15a,16a NIV)
Our situation today is not as dissimilar
from the writing of Paul’s letter to the Romans as we are inclined to think.
Make no mistake. The days of casual Christianity are over. The same issue of
deep faithfulness is upon us. Once again, we are in a time when to be Christian
is to be seen as quaint, backwards, and scientifically ignorant. For some, it
is even a sign of being mean spirited and bigoted. And here we must pause for a
moment to confess that we have brought some of this on by ourselves through a
narrow-minded refusal to love those who disagree and more often than we would
like, a coarse indifference to the hurting, hungry, and homeless, both
physically and spiritually. Yet surely the response to our appropriate
confession is not abject surrender to the whims of our hedonistically saturated
civilization. Dean Inge’s famous quote rightly reminds us that “Whoever marries
the spirit of this age will find himself [or herself] a widower [or widow] in
the next.”
Is it not time to admit that instead of being the transformer of culture we have been transformed by our culture?
-- Bishop Mike Lowry
#5812
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for sharing your comments about a quote or about this ministry. Please include your name and what state or country you live in. If you do not have a registered profile, you can login using the "Anonymous" tag in the "Comment as:" box below.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.