Last weekend I took my oldest girl, Aria (who is almost 9), camping. I’m not really the camping kind of person (not necessarily my favorite thing to do). But being the good Dad, I packed up my Wal-Mart camp-in-a-bag, and drove to Robber’s Cave State Park in Oklahoma with my daughter for some quality daddy/daughter time.
We get to the state park on Saturday evening and setup camp. Putting up the tent was a bit of a chore as we hadn’t done it for years and had kinda forgotten how. But to quote my daughter, after we finally got the tent up and found the swimming hole, the trip went from a “bad idea” to the “best trip ever”. There’s no middle ground with my daughter.
After a night under the stars, we awoke to a beautiful Sunday morning. We saw a few flyers posted around the park about a morning church service in the outdoor amphitheater. Being an evangelical Christian, I thought what better way to show my girl that we can “have church” anywhere, that there are believers all over the world that we can have fellowship with and that we don’t have to be tied to a specific place or building or even denomination. What could be better than attending church outdoors, right in the middle of God’s wonderful creation?
We arrived at the amphitheater on time, but we didn’t see anybody, so we were going to head back to camp, and then someone spotted us. Three people and a park ranger (who was off-duty but interestingly was a part-time pastor himself) met us. Apparently, they were waiting until somebody showed up before they held service. We found a shady spot and started. My daughter and I were the entire congregation.
It actually started out as a nice experience. One of the church crew that met us opened a guitar case and in a folksy voice started playing and singing an old hymn. We joined right in. Well, at least I did. Aria and I attend a church that sings more modern-sounding worship music (okay, we rock!), so she didn’t know any of the songs. Being a singer/songwriter myself, I still find it amazing how much better lyrically some of the old hymns are…
After the song service, a few more campers join us and a preacher (not the park ranger) gets up to deliver a sermon. That’s when things got disappointing. The preacher’s sermon started well, he obviously is a talented speaker, but the point of his sermon was something that I hear too many times in evangelical circles. I’m not blaming him for the content of his sermon. He has probably heard and adopted many sermons just like the one he delivered to us. Although partly based in truth and on the words and teachings of Jesus, it was delivered in error. The biblical passage he spoke from was Matthew 11:20-24. Here Jesus names the cities where most of his mighty works had been done and mentions that if these wonders were performed in Sodom (a city destroyed by God for the evil it committed), the city would have repented. I wonder here if Jesus was not only talking about his mighty works but about his actual presence. What city who gets a direct visit by the God and creator of the universe wouldn’t repent? In any case, the preacher attempted to make this passage the cornerstone of his sermon. To sum it up, he tried to show that the recent major disasters, from the Myanmar cyclone to the tornadoes and floods in Iowa, were God’s judgment. He then made the point that the frequency of natural disasters: massive earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes, floods, etc., have been increasing dramatically as of late, and that this was, of course, a direct result of us turning our backs on God and away from the truth — a sign that the end of all things was near…
When I heard all of this, I wanted to cover the ears of my little girl — better for her not to even hear this than to try to help her “unlearn” it later.
You see, our job as Christians isn’t to participate in the judgment of the sins of others. That is God’s business. Why heap condemnation on people who just need our help? Why villify the victims? We could have taken up an offering for the victims of the disasters he mentioned, but we didn’t. We could have dedicated 10 minutes to saying prayers for the victims of the disasters he mentioned. But we didn’t.
It’s remarkable that just a few chapters over in Matthew (5:45), Jesus says, “…[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain on the just and on the unjust”. To me, this shows that maybe not everything we experience in nature is necessarily a blessing or a curse from God based on our actions. Sometimes it just “is what it is”.
Back at the turn of the last century, liberalism (theologically and otherwise) started to take over our (America’s) universities, civil institutions, politics, and yes, even some Christian churches. The response of the church and of evangelicals of the day was to disengage and retreat. While this attitude is changing (it’s funny how the media calls it a “culture war”), sermons like the one mentioned here certainly don’t help. The sermon above shows a retreatist mentality — to disengage, to blame rather than to get involved and help change occur. In fact, I would say it shows a blatant disregard for the “Good News” which is what the Greek term “Gospel” means…
As a modern evangelical, I know that evil and sin are in this world. But I want to “engage” it. I want to engage politically, scientifically, creatively, morally, and lovingly. The Bible tells us to be “in the world.” We just don’t need to be “of the world”. So, let’s be in it, and stand out, stand up, and shine…
One Comment
Right on!