In America past, many Christians justified their stance on their treatment of native people groups, and owning slaves by saying that they were doing a good thing by bringing those “savages” into their good Christian homes where maybe they would find Jesus and learn to be more like them. Ironically, missing the egregiousness of their act, how twisted their thinking had become, or how far from Jesus it all was. But mankind has always looked for the voices and stance that will justify and give permission to the acts that are in their heart.
It grieves me that the voices that seem to be skyrocketing so fast in the Christian communities are the voices that are belligerent and angry and often lacking even an ounce of compassion or love in their message. But their videos and messages are being passed around and ingested like free food to the hungry.
But what spirit is being fed?
It is not surprising that these voices are almost always heavily weighted politically, because that political spirit is a win at all cost spirit that is ruthless and loves deception. It cares nothing for the “other” side. A hundred times I have wanted to ask, did you actually watch the video? Did you read the article? Because sometimes it is so dripping with hate and judgment, that I can’t believe anyone calling on the name of Jesus could get more than a minute in and the alarm bells not be going off. But some hearts have grown so calloused that I think many no longer hear the tone, or identify the divisive and manipulative words anymore.
The church is in great need of an outpouring of the gift of discernment. But the funny thing about the gift of discernment is that everyone seems to believe they have it. But the ear that has tuned into the wrong voices for so long that they believe them to be of God, is no longer able to discern between God’s voice and the adversary’s. In their heart, any voice that does not align with theirs is not of God and any voice that does, they will give their God stamp too. People are throwing the heart and good name of God to the wolves just so that they can have another voice to post that validates their side of the argument. It needs to stop.
So I speak to the church today in saying, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be more responsible about the videos and articles you are passing around. Even if the person validates the stance that you believe with all your heart, if their message is lacking love, full of judgment, and does not have a heart of restoration or redemption, it is not a voice you need to be propagating. Jesus’ voice will always be one of love and redemption. The more people give their ears to these messages, and pass them around, the more desensitized people become and the more we normalize loveless messages in the church. Until after a while, people no longer see those things as wrong, hateful or lacking love. This is how we get to the place where we can enslave ourselves and others, and believe it to be inviting people to Jesus. Please be responsible with your posts!
Thank you, Lanell Drummer.
I am listening and I hear you.
Thank you for the patience and persistent voice of Love you offer.
I bow to you
Cat
Posted by: Cat Anderson | July 09, 2020 at 01:26 PM