Those @#!*&% Evangelicals!

Here's the problem with Christians today: their off-the-scale unhealthy emphasis on what we do over what we believe. This is precisely the reason evangelicals - especially fundamentals, with the emphasis on "mental" - have become so irrelevant in today's culture. What words of condemnation did Jesus have for the woman at the well or the gal caught in the act of adultery (an offense punishable by death back then)? Jesus did not have a single word of condemnation for either woman.

Then why are evangelicals so ready to point out what's wrong with the world? Their entire agenda has become what Christians are against when we instead ought to be preaching to the world what we are FOR. There is a huge difference. Everyone in the world can point out what evangelicals are against - homosexuality, abortion, divorce - but how many non-Christians can tell us what Christians are for? By emphasizing what Christianity is against we have bred an entire culture represented by Christopher Hitchens in his new book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Fortunately any thinking Christian can easily shoot Hitchens out of the water since his arguments are the same old weak garbage we incessantly hear from his type: look at all the evil wrought in the name of religion, you can't prove God exists, why is there evil in the world, blah blah blah...very tired arguments wrapped in tired intellectual language making it appeal to those spoken of in Romans: "although they claimed to be wise, they became fools." These same tired old arguments - peppered with a strong dose of contempt for anything that might hint at a personal and loving God - also litter the pages of Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. I expected much more from such an accomplished intellectual as Dawkins but his book is (or certainly should be) a sore disappointment to fellow atheists. Lots of ranting, accusations often unsupported by references (making them toothless and meaningless), and lots of poor argumentation...the same old same old.

Even though these anti-God books are laughably inadequate in accomplishing their goals, yet us Christians bear a lot of the responsibility for their existence since these authors and millions like them look at all the stupid things we spend our effort on and rightfully reject a God that could support these crazy notions. When Christians make the greatest commandments their focal point - to simply love God and love people - then these God haters will have no more arguments left to stand on.

Is this not what's going to eventually happen? Will not every human being one day stand before God and realize the truth about who he is? So why are we not trying to accomplish this here and now? Let's show the world a God who loves with an infinite and perfect love. That will disarm them and help them take a quantum leap forward toward acknowledging who God really is and who he wants to be for them.