Busy Service For Christ Keeping Us From Living Like Jesus?

There are many people--children, women, and men . . . who are being abused, and mistreated--oppressed all around us. We can all prayerfully do something for those who are oppressed. Right now, my heart is focused on those who are undocumented workers in the U.S. Close to where I live, many are being robbed and taken advantage of because the perpetrators know they can't/won't go to the police for fear of deportation. How would God have you prayerfully act wherever you are?

The Church has often been guilty of failing to act and speak out when it should. In fact, many times its because she  ignorantly tows the political party line. Those who do act on issues of justice or who sound the alarm are denounced as liberals and demonized. I fear this is the case in America. Although many have said that in the U.S. that immigration is the new Civil Right's issue, the majority of Americans and even those in the American Church seem to be on the wrong side yet again. It's a complicated issue, yes, but sometimes doing that right thing can be complicated. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

 Most of those in the German Church also towed the party line during World War II. And some live to regret it.  Read this account by a German Christian who was there. It is found in Erwin Lutzer's book, Hitler's Cross:

I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it? A railroad track ran behind our small church and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. we realized it was carrying Jews like cattle in cars!

Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sounds of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us.

We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top  of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.

Years have passed and no one talks about it anymore. But I still hear the train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians yet did nothing to intervene.

Erwin Lutzer goes on to say, "That story, which speaks so pointedly to the weakness of the church in Germany, speaks also to us: Do we hear the train here in America--the cries of the pre-born children in our abortion clinics, the abused child across the street, or the minorities who are daily discriminated against in the normal course of their existence? Or does our busy service for Christ drown out these muffled cries?

pp. 99-100

On Responsibility. Play. Writing. Laughter. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I really like Madeleine L'Engle...especially her non-fiction. She is one of my favorite writers. While she is no longer living with us on this side of eternity, she is enjoying time with God and the other saints in Paradise. This is an exerpt from her book Circle of Quiet the first book in her Crosswicks Journal. (Harper San Francisco, 1972).

". . . this certainly says something about the state of Christianity today. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is; I wouldin't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word 'Christian' means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how they love one another?"

No wonder our youth is confused and in pain; they long for God, the transcendent, and are offered, far too often, either piosity or sociology, neither of which meets their needs, and they are introduced to churches which have become buildings that are safe places to escape the awful demands of God . . . .

To be responsible means precisely what the word implies: to be capable of giving a response . . . . A writer who writes a story which has no response to what is going on in the world is not only copping out himself but is helping others to be irresponsible, too . . . .

To refuse to respond is in itself a response. Those of us who write are responsible for the effect of our books. Those who teach, who suggest books to either children or adults, are responsible for their choices. Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surround us or we light a candle to see by.

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up in a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it is irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it.

One of the greatest weapons of all is laughter, a gift for fun, a sense of play which is sadly missing from the grownup world . . . . Paradox again; to take ourselves seriously enough to take ourselves lightly. If every hair of my head is counted, then in the very scheme of the cosmos I matter; I am created by a power who cares about the sparrow, and the rabbit in the snare, and the people on the crowded streets; who calls the stars by name. And you. And me.

When I remember this it is as though ounds were lifted from me. I can take myself lightly, and share in the laughter . . . .

pp. 98-99.