Does God have a split personality?

    This has always been a concern of mine since I was just a kid.  It often dumbfounded me as to why in the OT (Old Testament) God lays down harsh laws and punishments and then in the NT (New Testament) God is all about grace and forgiveness.    Does God have a multiple personality disorder?  Why does he in the OT put restrictions on eating, dressing and circumcision and then in the NT says none of that matters anymore?

    It occurred to me later in life after having children that God does not have a split personality.  Instead, he is merely a Father on a mission to save the world.    We fathers are often like that.   We can be reading our kids the riot-act and threatening them with all kinds of punishments one minute and the next minute jovial and kidding around with them.   The difference is the context.   If you have ever been in Disneyland or Disney World you will have undoubtedly witnessed one of the transformations.   All it takes is a father who realizes that they have 5 minutes to make it across the park in order to make their Fast-Pass scheduled time for a ride they have been waiting for all day and suddenly the jovial, happy-go-lucky parent turns into a strict, do-as-I-tell-you-or-else parent who threatens their kids with all kinds of punishments if their actions prevent them from arriving at their destination as scheduled.

     God is no different in the OT.   We forget that God is a man on a mission.  He has already decided to come to earth through the Israelites at the time of the Roman Empire.  He needs to get his people from where they are at in Egypt (around 2000BC) to where they need to be to enter our history and set all things straight.   Like the children in Disneyland, they have a lot of distractions along the way that could cut that trip short.   They will have to wade through cultures that run counter to God's directions.   Those cultures will suck them in and try to dilute them and turn them into one of the many other cultures that don't exist anymore such as the Hitites, the Amonites, the Caananites and many more.   Can you point to anyone today and say they descended from the Amonnites?   Of course not!   They are all gone and assimilated into the other cultures around them.  The same could have happened to the Jewish people as well.  Likewise,  the worship of other gods like Baal and Moloch could cause the Israelites to forget God's mission and his promises to them.   Too often we fail to see that their culture was nothing like what we have today.   We often make the mistake in our minds of thinking that all that is different for the people in the OT is the year and that they don't have our modern conveniences.   But nothing could be further from the truth.   They were dealing with cultures very much far removed from what we deal with today.

     Take for example the god Baal.  Baal was a fertility god who was worshiped by paying money to a
priest and then having sex with a temple prostitute.   How does God compete with that?  The line of men outside of the temple must have gone on for miles.  Now imagine being surrounded by thousands of Baals followers who keep telling you that you are missing out on some really good worship at the temple.  Is it really any wonder at all that in the OT the Israelites are constantly being pulled back in the Baal worship?   Also ask yourself where did the Baal priests get the girls to be the Baal prostitutes?   Most likely they came as offerings from families looking for additional blessings from Baal and so offered their own daughters to the temple for service since girls were held in such low esteem by these other cultures (an ancient letter from a Egyptian nobleman to his wife suggested drowning the baby if it turns out to be a girl).  What should God do about this?  Nothing?  Do you think that these people will end their worship of Baal with just a harsh talking to by their Jewish neighbors? 

     And let's not forget about the god Moloch.  God warns them in multiple places to not sacrifice
their children in the fire to Moloch.  Let that sink in for a while.   These people were offering up their very own children as a burnt offering to an idol to help insure their crops come in at harvest time.    For some time, people thought that this was pure hyperbole on the part of the Jewish people.  But in recent years , altars built in honor of Moloch have been uncovered and the burnt bones of children 2 years old and less were found  (my guess is that most of these children were girls as well).   God's need to remove these people from the land the Israelites were going to inhabit was necessary not only to prevent them from getting involved in this religion, but also as a way to bring the worship of Moloch to an end as well.

    Given all of these problems that could prevent God's people from reaching their goal, God uses a system of "blessings and curses" to help guide his people and keep them on course.   He's not doing this just to be a "mean God" but to bring salvation to the world through these people.    

      But what about all those silly rules about not eating shell fish, pork, etc ?   Why do those go away in the NT as well but not the other commandments like "Do not commit adultery" ?   To answer this you must understand that there are 2 sets of laws in the Jewish culture.   The first is the legal or social laws.  These consist of the 10 commandments and the laws that God gives under these to help them clarify what they mean.    The other laws are religious or dietary laws.  Unlike the former laws, these do not have blessings and curses attached to them.   They are merely told that God detests them.   For a Jew these can be practiced or not practiced, but if you are a "good Jew" you will.    But why did God have them do these things?   So many of them seem so silly to us today.

      To answer, let's go back to our Disneyland example.
You often see families do strange things
when they visit large theme parks like Disneyland.   They will often dress their kids in bright (some would say gaudy) clothes and even put name tags and even have them wear silly looking hats in some cases.  Why?  So they stick out in a crowd and therefore can be more easily identified by the others in case they get lost.    The same goes for the Jews and their religious laws.   It's meant to distinguish them from all the other tribes in the area and remind them on a daily basis about who they are and what they stand for.   Imagine every time a Jewish man goes to the bathroom and they look down and see that their wee-wee is different from every other wee-wee.  Instantly they are reminded, "Oh yeah! I am a Jew".   Then imagine every time they go to the market and they see shell fish for sale or pork.   Again they are remind, "Oh yeah! I am a Jew!".   Other laws as well not only remind them of their heritage but also as a prophecy of what God will do in the future.   Take for example their laws requiring that all debts be forgiven every 50 years or that every year they were to take a spotless sheep and sacrifice it to God for the atonement of all their sins.

    Similarly,  just like the family takes off their "Disney attire" when they leave the park because its not needed anymore so also after Jesus has accomplished all that the Father has destined him to do we no longer need the religious laws such as not eating pork, shell-fish or circumcision.   In fact, the early Jewish-Christians dropping of these laws illustrates to the rest of the world just how real Jesus life-death-and-resurrection are to them as they are willing to go against their Jewish tradition and upbringing for the sake of the Gospel.

     In conclusion, when you take a step back and look at what God's mission is and the various mind-fields he has to walk these people through you begin to understand the purpose of these "silly laws" and you begin to see God for who he is.   Loving, caring and concerned for our well-being and not having a split-personality.

We must remember history's villains as well as its heroes

    Some day people will no longer remember General Robert E. Lee.   As politicians jump on the "Erase the Civil War History bandwagon" names of the Confederacy leaders are being erased faster than you can say "Forrest Gump".    Statues are being removed, flags pulled down, parks schools and hospitals are being given new names all in the name of helping us feel good about ourselves. 

    But erasing the villains does not change history or what was done.   These symbolic gestures do not change who we are or what happened but only seek to cover it up.   Like a crime scene being wiped down with a a clean rag to erase all the evidence and fingerprints we lose important information for future generations to comb through and learn from.   What happened to the villains is as important as what happened to the heroes in any story.   Who they were and what they believed give us a point of reference to compare and contrast.   Like using an object in a photograph in the fore-ground helps give dimension to the objects in the background that you want to highlight.   So also, these men and battles provide us with a sense of immenseness to what the northern union had to overcome in order to win freedom for the slaves. 

    Also, we have become very one dimensional in our thinking and view of the world.  Hollywood in its movies quite often presents us with simplistic villains that have no redeeming qualities.   They are bad asses and that is all.   No more.. no less.  But the real world isn't so one dimensional.   Yes people can have some bad ideas on race and slavery.   But that doesn't mean they did not have any good qualities to admire.   General E. Lee for example was the lead of the Confederate Army for the entire war and nearly defeated the Union early on despite the Union's unmatched factories and population to draw from.   Compared to the Union, Lincoln had to replace his top general on several occasions before giving the job to Gen. Grant.   Lee was able to inspire his men in many victories against the north and his knowledge of military fighting was clearly and advantage for the south.   Do we erase all of that because he espoused slavery?    Would we erase the history of Lincoln because as a lawyer he represented a slave owner and argued for the slave to be returned to his home state?  I hope you would say "Of course not!".   But that is what you are requesting when you erase the history of people like Lee.   And what happened to Lee after the war?   Was he imprisoned by Lincoln and hung for crimes against humanity?   No.  He retired quietly and never again tried to rally troops to break from the Union again.   He showed honor and grace in losing and brought peace to the South during the restoration.   Are there lessons we can learn from him today?   Can our future politicians learn how to handle defeat and how to put their country and their people ahead of their own egos?

I think we can.

The benefits of shame

SHAME ON YOU!

   How do those words make you feel?  Angy?  Upset?  Embarrassed?    Parents for eons have used those words directed at their children when they feel their children have stepped out of line.  They may have lied, cheated, stolen, hit someone, skipped school, saw a dirty movie or magazine or a thousand other ways kids get in trouble. 

    Shame has long been used as a societies way of fixing small problems before they become larger ones.  A child may steal a candy bar at a store and the parent marches them back to confront the store manager with what they have done and promise they will never do it again.  My daughter when she was in junior high got caught up in the wrong group of girls who liked to take things from the store.   They got caught the first time she was with them and I had to go into to get her because mom was visiting relatives back home.  My daughter was embarrassed to say the least and was required to sign a paper stating they would not frequent that store anymore.  Shame did its work and she stopped hanging with those girls from then on and she had learned her lesson.  A little shame now for those other girls hopefully would prevent a future larger crime requiring a larger penalty to be used such as jail.   Speaking of jail, there have been other cases where judges have used shame to correct a persons behavior.  It usually was a minor offense but the penalty was one they would not forget.  In many of these cases the person was required to hold a large sign on a busy road telling all the world what they had done and why they were stupid to have done it. 

     But shame in modern society has been utilized less and less and therefore our children will reap less of its benefits.   Yes.  You read that right.   I said BENEFITS.
     Take for example, Bruce Jenner.   He (I refuse to say "she" as 100% of his chromosomes will
always say XY and therefore from a scientific perspective Bruce Jenner will always be MALE) has benefited from shaming in his life.  Ask yourself this.  What caused him to hide his desire to wear women's clothes for so long?  Shame of course.  He internally new it was not normal for boys to want to wear women's clothes and so he hid it out of shame.   That "shame" allowed Bruce Jenner to go on and become the World's Greatest Athlete by breaking (and still holding) the record of the Olympic Decathlon.   That "shame" allowed him to make millions of dollars in TV and magazine  endorsements and appearances.  That "shame" allowed him to become a broadcast journalist for ABC during future Olympics and sporting events.  That "shame" allowed him to become the famous person he is and without it, he would have just been another transvestite walking around with fake boobs and wearing women's clothes and makeup.   No Olympic medal. No endorsements.  No fame.  No "Life with the Kardashians".   Nothing.   You can also assume as well that without all that money he would not have the necessary funds to pay for the expensive surgery and procedures to do his transformation process and Catlyn would just be another dream unfulfilled.

    So what about future Bruce/Catlyn Jenner's that are out there?  How many other boys who are unsure about their masculinity will choose to assume a different persona instead of hold their inner demons at bay and strive to make something of who they are as men?    We've already seen so called parents who are willing to let little Joey dress up like sister Jamey.  They don't want to "shame" their son into behaving as he should.   To them, there are no social boundaries that should be adhered to.  It's easier for them to demand that the "world change" and not their son or daughter.   They abdicate their responsibilities as parents for fear of being labeled bigots or intolerant.  They let so called psychological "experts" determine their actions as parents and so leave their children to the vices of the world.

    We will never understand all the mental illnesses that inflict people of our society.  That is how I see Bruce Jenner.  I don't see him as a hero.  I see him as a poor mentally ill person who in his aging years has decided to stop fighting his illness and give into it.   He has decided to put aside his children and family who now must come to grips about their "father".   Their feelings are inconsequential to him now.   He may shed tears of sorrow for them, but those are just alligator tears and nothing more.  His actions say "SCREW THEM! ITS MY NEEDS!".  They must be dragged into this whole circus and be paraded around like a bunch of trained elephants for all to see and question.  Their needs have been weighed in the balance and "Catlyn's" needs must come first and foremost.  After all, in our current societies view it's no longer considered to be an illness.   It's now viewed to be a great triumph for mankind.  One small step for Catlyn... one giant leap for all things strange and perverted.  Our children no longer have heroes to look up to like Neal Armstrong,  Jacky Robinson,  John Wayne or Hank Aaron.  Now in our politically correct world it's a parade of mentally ill people who grace our magazine covers.   Break a 100 year record?  Who cares!  Find a cure for cancer?  Big deal!  Stop a terrorist from killing hundreds of people?  So what!  But break some social convention and make people grimace as they contemplate your decision to come out of yet-another-closet.... HE'S A HERO!  LET'S CELEBRATE!!

    There's an old saying that says "If you promote something you will get more of it".  If this is true, I guess we will be seeing a lot more "Catlyn's" in our future. 

    So all I can is "Pass the barf bag".

         

Don't raise your children in a "Truman dome"

    If you remember the ending of the movie "The Truman Show", we see Truman who has been for his entire life lied to by everyone around him.  He is the only person in the show that is not in on the joke that he is living out his life inside a giant dome where everything is controlled (including the weather).   His life is one magical encounter after another.  He is smiled at by everyone and he is told by everyone how great a person he is.  But then he starts to wake up to the reality of his situation.  Things don't add up and by the end of the movie he must make a decision to stay inside the dome or exit into the REAL world.  (We don't get to see what happens AFTER he leaves but we assume all is well and good for him).

   This decision is the same one our kids make as they graduate from college.

   Which brings me to a trend I have noticed lately on the internet.   This is the season for graduation commencement addresses to be given all across the land.  Colleges are promoting their students to the next level in life and to do so bring in a variety of speakers to do the task of inspiring them for their future endeavors.   What I have noticed is a increase in commencement "truth telling" that we have not seen before.   We hear less of the "you are special", "you can do it", "you are the bright stars of our future we have been waiting for.." and more from truth-tellers are willing to stand up to their podiums and pronounce the hard facts to the youth robed and sitting in front of them.   They tell them things like:

1. You are not special
2. Life is hard
3. You will fail
4. Life is more than awards
5. You need to work hard to get anywhere

   These facts are important for them to hear.  But I am afraid for many of them they are too late to be taught.  They have spent the last 21 years of their life coddled, pumped up, lavished with trophies, told they are 1 in a million, excused for their failures and given grade that are meaningless.  Those lessons have been taught in classrooms, soccer fields, playgrounds, at awards ceremonies and at home.   When they lost a game they were told the other team was just a little better and they are really a good team.   When they got a bad grade on a report card they were excused because either "that class was really tough" or "that teacher was not fair" but not because "they failed to turn in assignments or study for quizzes and tests".   At the end of their soccer or baseball seasons we handed out plastic participation trophies most of which are now wasting space in either attics or garbage dumps.   But no matter, it made them feel "good about themselves".

     Now we delude ourselves into thinking that a 20 minute sermon from a Hollywood star or a multimillionaire will undo all those years of damage?   To me, that's like you weighing 400 lbs from spending your whole life eating nothing but McDonald's fast food and you think eating a couple of celery sticks is going to slim you down to a normal weight.   But that is our mode of operation here in America these days.   That's life in the Delusional States of America where we think a motivational speaker can change everything if we pay them enough money.

     Your kids have a long hard row to hoe and many of them are picking up their hoe now for the first time in their life.   They will get blisters on their hands and their arms and backs will hurt.  Many will give up and come back to your nests because the worlds is too painful for them.  My hope for them (and you) is that you don't "rinse and repeat" the same mistakes.   My son came back for a couple of years too (I have written about it before) but he realized how much harder the world is and that he needed that slap of reality to wake him up.  He has worked very hard to change himself and make a life for himself.   He faced his mistakes and bad decisions.  He has surrounded himself with like-minded people who want to travel that "road less taken" to make something of themselves and has since ventured back out on his own to take on new challenges.  He knows he will fall down again at some point.  He knows that both failure and success are in his future and he needs to work through those failures when they come.

     For those of you whose kids are still in elementary school there is still time to change course.  You can be your own child's "truth-teller" and "inspirational speaker" if you want to.  Maybe it starts with you telling your soccer coach that they won't be going to the award pizza party (or at least they don't need a plastic participation trophy).   Maybe it's not rewarding your kids for getting B's when they could get A's.   Maybe it's simplifying their birthday parties and keeping them simple (even just within the immediate family).   Or it is talking about your failures and not just your successes to them so they know that you didn't always have it so easy.   Whatever the case, don't wait for their college or high school graduation to come for unlike "The Truman Show" there might not be so happy of an ending for them.

Bowling for sinners

    Ever since I was about 6 years old I have loved bowling.   I can still remember my family going to a bowling alley in Carlyle Illinois to bowl a few games.   I remember it well because it was the first time I ever bowled a STRIKE!   Back then we didn't have gutter-bumpers to keep the ball in the alley either for the kids.   In those days, it was as difficult for the kids as it was for the adults to get the ball all the way down the alley and hit the pins.  That night I bowled a 52 and I kept the score sheet tacked to my bedroom wall to look at for weeks on end.

    Bowling is a strategic game where you try to hit the front pin (#1) in just the right way that that ball knocks enough pins such that they ricochet in a manner that all 10 get knocked down.  If you don't hit that first pin, your are not going to get a strike unless you are very very lucky.   Also strikes are beneficial in bowling because you add the next 2 balls you bowl to the current frame you just got a strike in.   So if you bowl 2 more strikes after this one (referred to as a "turkey" ...don't ask me why... it just is), you get to add 20 more points to the 10 you got for this frame and that adds 30 points.  Call it the compounding effect.

    Satan uses this same compounding approach in our lives as well.  Our sins have a tendency to replicate and increase in scope those they impact.   A one-night affair for example can lead to divorce, divorce can ruin the children's lives and cause them to hate their father (or mother) and lead to drug abuse, teen pregnancy and even suicide.   Children of divorce also are more likely to stop going to church (if they did before) as they associate their father being a hypocrite and a phoney-baloney christian which they want nothing to be a part of.   Once this is accomplished it may be MANY generations until that family ever has a member darken the doorway of a church ever again.

     The effect of the one sin is thereby multiplied many times over.   This is why parents need to be so careful.  They are not just looking out for themselves but also their children and grandchildren as well.  What caused me to write this blog was I just read a story of a Lutheran pastor in Michigan who is married and has 5 children was found to have a profile on a dating website and had apparently several hookups.  How did this happen?   My guess is started by him using porn, but that is just my guess.   For whatever the cause, his sin has tragically destroyed not only his marriage and his children but also untold hundreds of his members.   Many congregations that go through such an upheaval will lose members by the droves and might end up closing their doors for good.

     I call this Satan's "bowling for sinners" and it's extremely effective. 

     I can recall one time when I was faced with a similar situation.   It was late at night (10:30 or so) and everyone else was in bed (my kids were 6 & 7 at the time) and I needed to go do some grocery shopping because we had nothing to make for their lunches the next morning.   I went to a store called Food Source and did my shopping.   When I reached the checkout counter I saw a very beautiful blonde woman checking out in front of me.  Because Food Source allowed 2 people to bag their food in parallel at the same time, we were both bagging our food and exchanged simple pleasantries ("Hi. Nice night").   Since I had less groceries I finished first and exited the store.  As I pushed my cart out to the car I could hear a cart coming up quickly behind me and noticed it was her running with her cart.  She said, "Oh this is nice! I am parked right next to you!".  I put my bags in the car and was intrigued as to what she wanted (I won't lie).   As I was about to pull out she tapped on my window.  After I rolled down my window she asked if I could wait a minute and so I did as she put her cart away.   She then came back and said "I would be really happy if you followed me home.  Hope to see you later!" and with that she got into her car and drove slowly off waiting for me to catch up to her.   As I pulled my car out of my parking space a simple thought came to me:

Nothing GOOD can come from this

     And with that as she exited the parking lot, she turned right and I turned left and I never saw her again.   I don't know what she had in mind.  Maybe it was sex.  Maybe it was all a joke.  Maybe she had a bet with a friend and I was a way to win it.  Maybe she was nuts. I really don't know.   I think that in that moment God spoke to me in those few words inserted into my brain.  Like Joseph  confronted with Potifer's wife asking him to lay with her and him saying "How can I do this and sin against God!" and then running out of the house half naked.   That is how I felt.   Yes, to some of you it would have been better if I had said that suddenly I saw the face of my wife and kids flashing before my eyes or something of that line that made me change coarse but it wasn't.   This isn't a scene from a Hollywood movie and frankly, I don't think men's brains are built that way.   Robin Williams once put it this way when talking to Johnny Carson: 

"God gave man a brain and a penis but only enough blood to run one of them at a time"

     That is how I always feel when I see men destroyed by their decisions they make.  Take for
example Tiger Woods.   The man had everything you could want.  Fame (everyone knows his name).  Fortune (worth millions).  Great wife (a super model).   Now, he's lost it all.  His golf game crumbled (hasn't won a major tournament in years), his wife left him with the kids, he became the butt of late night comics and he lost all his TV/magazine advertising endorsements.    All this because he wanted to spend a few minutes with women who, in my opinion, were nothing more than discount prostitutes. 

     I often pray to God that I never do anything that would destroy my marriage or my kids faith in Him.   I know how easily it can happen today as marriage is held in such low esteem these days among people and so few care if a man has a wedding ring on or not (and for some women it can actually serve as a dinner bell).   I don't want to be pin #1 in Satan's sights with my wife, kids and future grandchildren following close behind. It is for this reason these 10 words in the Lord's Prayer mean so very much to me every time I say them.

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!"

    Let me be very clear here.  I am not saying that I never sin.  I do.  I sin hundreds of times a day.  Just ask my wife and she will tell you that the last thing I am is a saint.  What I pray is that I never commit a sin so grievous that would harm my family or their faith beyond repair.

    That "strike" I could never live with.
   

Christians thinking small rather than BIG.

     We've all seen the commercials where a star athlete has just won a major victory and the camera comes up to them and says, "Hey ___________! You just won ___________!  What are you going to do NEXT?"  and of course the answer is always the same.  "I'm going to Disney World!".

     You might say the same happened to Jesus after the resurrection.   In Acts 1:6 it says

"So when they met together, they asked Jesus 'Lord are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?' "

     I find it interesting that the passage does not indicate any one disciple asked him the question.  So it must have been a group request that they had been discussing.  Here Jesus has just gone through a excruciating ordeal of beatings, floggings, mocking, crucifixion, death and ultimately being resurrected and now he is being asked what he's going to do NEXT for his "hat trick".    Many of them joined Jesus because they had visions of him ruling from King David's throne and kicking the Romans out.  To many of them, being under Roman rule (or any Gentile rule for that matter) was an injustice that needed to be rectified by God for them to realize their full potential and purpose as God's chosen people.  Maybe they thought there was still a chance Jesus will do that very thing.  After all, in their minds all he had to do was march back into Jerusalem (they could even get another donkey for him to ride in on) go to the Temple, show himself to all the priests and then to Pilot and then "BOOM" he would be made King and no one would dare touch him. 

      Jesus response is simple (Acts 1:7-8)

"It is not for you to know the times and dates the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth"

     He in effect is telling them that they are thinking "too small" and they need to think bigger.  They were not just going to sit back in Jerusalem and enjoy the glory days of old.  They were going to get sent out to the very ends of the earth to proclaim the good news of Salvation.  They were not going to "Disney World" but instead to the WHOLE WORLD.   Their eyes must have popped out of their heads when they heard these words. 

      We today often think small too.  We want heaven on earth now just like the disciples did.  We see injustice all around us.  We believe these injustices need to be remedied by God for us to realize our full potential as his children.  Some of us, like the disciples, long for the glory days of old and want God to restore them ASAP.    We may ask God:

• Lord will you at this time restore our country to the 1950's (or 1980's)?
• Lord will you at this time end poverty?
• Lord will you at this time end unemployment?
• Lord will you at this time end racism?
• Lord will you at this time end cancer?

   Even within the church we see people thinking small instead of big.  For years the Lutheran Church has been under fire to allow woman Pastors (I am talking about the LCMS and WELS).   We see other churches change course on this in modern times.  The ELCA Lutherans have.  The Presbyterians have.  The Episcopal church has.  So why not our church?   To some this may be seen as an "injustice" that needs to be rectified for them to move forward.  Maybe their request would be "Lord will you at this time allow woman to serve as pastors?".   But given our position on scripture and that there is no clear command from Jesus that this is to change from the old covenant to the new covenant, I would have to say the answer from God would be the same,

"No.  But you go and be my witnesses to the end of the earth!"   

     God knows we have a limited amount of time (he has set the date) and a limited amount of energy to use (cannot be created or destroyed according to Sir Isaac Newton) and therefore we must make the most of the time and energy we have to reach as many as we can with the good news we have.   When we strive to make our heaven here on earth we waste our time and energy.  Yet I see so much of this today in the church as it struggles with non-gospel related subjects.  Many churches have decided that the world is better and fairer than the church and they seek to bring the world into the church.  Even though Jesus had warned us to be "in the world but not of the world".  Like a boat moving in the ocean is in the water but does not let the water into it or else it sinks, so also we must be careful to not let the worlds ways distract us from our REAL mission.
 
      Not that these injustices are small in scope at all.  Poverty, hatred, disease are all immense and important issues and God wants us to be involved in.  But our goal is not the idea we can eradicate these injustices (even Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you"), but that we as his disciples and witnesses can use these injustices to reach the people with the Gospel of God's justice of paying the penalty of all our sins through his son, Jesus Christ.  We know that these issues will ultimately be fixed when God creates a new heaven and a new earth.  We must therefore be his witnesses to reach the unsaved and give them true eternal justice.

      We need to think BIG as Christians and stop thinking small.