I like you. All of you. The Calvinists. The Bible thumpers. The Loosey-Goosey Liberals. The Messiah people. You’re all nutty in your own special way. Street preachers especially. I put together a Flickr slideshow just of street preachers. They’re an interesting bunch. And they really make people angry.
[Don’t confuse street preachers with The Manic Street Preachers, a Welsh punk band whose rhythm guitarist disappeared a decade ago.]
Just come over to Africa some time and you’ll really get a taste of nuttiness. There are Pentecostal Baptist churches. There are African Initiated Churches that cover a multilayered cake of African traditional religion with a thin layer of Leviticus.
The Messianic Christians are getting revved up by my recent rant. I’ve got three little problems with this movement:
- I can’t grow a beard.
- Shofar so bad.
- It’s laughable to Jews and heretical to Christians.
I guess I shouldn’t be judgmental. After all, I’ve been known to use Celebrating Common Prayer which according to a certain Charismatic Anglican is an abomination. And I have other strange ideas like “A translation of the Bible is as inspired as the original documents.”
So, come on now. Let’s grab hands and make a big circle. There you go. Don’t be shy. Look at all those people that you’re connected to because of your allegiance to Jesus Christ. Anyone out there that you’d like to burn at the stake or at least apply some thumb screws?
Jesus loves you. And them. Or maybe he’s just laughing at our silly antics in his name.
Like is as far as you can go?
Jeff
You, I love. Some of these other people make me wonder.
Don’t start judging them. Be like me in refusing to call anything an abomination (I’m sure I didn’t!) It’s only that that keeps you (and me!) from being among them.
I see and read about a lot of strange (nuttiness?) in the name of Jesus. What worries me more is the inability of people to differentiate the essentials from the orthodox, unite and reach the world. What power and capability we believers could have if we focused on the really important, let each have his own quirkiness, and reach the world. If we worked as “one” as Jesus prayed maybe the world would take us more seriously. Blessings on your outreach to our brothers and sisters on the big continent.
ΙΧΘΥΣ: I acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the world.
If we can affirm that together I think that makes us brothers in Christ.