Dangers of Evangelism ...

In the early church just after Christ returned to His Father, there was a teaming harvest that was ready to be gathered.  Preaching to great crowds with thousands of new coverts to the faith became a common phenomenon.  Evangelism was born.  The idea of traveling to a new area, preaching to crowds, converting as many as will listen, and moving to the next new area has been around since the days of Peter and Paul.  So where did the danger come from?  What is it about Evangelism now, which calls into question the character of God and His Honor?

Modern Evangelism seems to have lost its traditional appeal.  There was a time, when the pure revelation of the word of God and story of the Gospel was enough to warrant the attention of thousands.  But not today.  Could it be that the example Christians have set is so poor that non-believers are uninterested in our ‘differences’.  Today religious fundamentalists like the folks in Texas with the multiple wives get National Press attention.  Why?  Because they are SO different from the norms of society it is worth noting the conflicts they have with our laws and traditions.

Put simply, mainstream Christianity is not so radical anymore.  Peter and Paul preached against the social norms of the day.  They upset the governmental powers that be, and died still preaching and living their example of the word.  A church where true unconditional love was the common uniting principle, alive and active in the life of every believer would make National news.  That is how rare it has become.  How sad.  A church where messages of love for our enemies including the ones that mean to kill us all would be considered radical.  And you never hear about one like that.  There is not one Christian Preacher of prominence who is ridiculed for offering Love to Osama, Saddam, or Castro – let alone a group of Christian preachers who share this radical belief of returning love for hate. 

We have become so like the world around us, it is impossible to distinguish who follows God from who does not.  Morality is the goal of the day.  Divorced from the concept of an authoring God, and applied only in relation to others, this subjective standard has all but replaced any outside view of ourselves.  We all look alike to each other.  One Christian denomination looks just like another.  Oh there may be a few quirks in our doctrinal interpretations, but the core of our characters do not reflect the love of our Master.  They reflect focus on ourselves.  They reflect only ambivalence to others.

Given this state of affairs, why would crowds gather to hear yet another Christian preacher talk about love?  Love has lost its meaning.  So how can Evangelism survive?  We must find another motivating idea to replace the lost love we had for God.  How about fear?  Fear becomes the new rally call of the typical Evangelist.  If we cannot lure you with our love for you, perhaps we can scare you back into the pews to listen.  After all, there is impending doom of Judgment lurking out there, followed by an appointment at the Fire-Sale.  Most believers accept these concepts readily (both based in salvation through our own merits, good or bad).  So when you strike the fear chord in the heart of the backslider, he wakes up and pays attention.  Remember Hell you backsliding heathen. Well, if you don’t want to be there, you better get out to the meetings.

We do not outright focus on fear of course.  We couch it under the banner “last day prophesies.”  Or anything to do with prophetic events, interpretations, current world news, and impending doom.  All of these are themes that modern Evangelism has made its bread and butter.  Again, without a core of love to attract you, perhaps fear will wake you up.  Then our logic gets replaced with rationalization that some people learn differently from others.  That it does not matter what the motive is that gets you to come to God; only that you arrive in front of God.  If fear does it for you, that’s OK.  I mean, love can’t do it for everybody, right?

But what happens when the message of impending doom based on current world news, does not really evolve over a 40-50 year period of time?  Even fear mongering becomes dull.  Fear loses its edge when the impending doom of judgment is delayed 5 decades.  Then comes the reasoning that people have been preaching the end of the world since Christ went home to Heaven, and we’re still here.  All the Y2K folks who spoke of planes dropping out the of sky, and banks crashing, were wrong.  The folks back in 1844 were wrong.  Pretty much every doom-sayer has been wrong so far.  Looks like even preaching fear can get tired.  So now what?

The problem with all this line of thinking is the complete loss of the fundamentals of the gospel itself.  The story of the salvation of man is NOT one of fear, but of love.  God is not the enemy, He is the good guy.  He did not sit back in His throne in Heaven and tell us to get our acts together or burn.  He told us to wait right there and He would send His only Son to us to die in our place.  He told us ALL we had to do was believe, and we would be saved from the bondage of sin.  He did everything for us, and required nothing of us – this is the definition of love.  This is the story no other religion or God offers.  But because we do not allow it to take over our lives, we reflect only a fraction of the love God would send through us.  And our Evangelism becomes pale.

You cannot scare someone into the Kingdom of God.  Heaven is not a fire escape.  God is not a Santa Clause, or a benevolent dictator.  It is impossible to know love for someone you live in fear of.  In pandering to fear, we do the work of God a disservice.  Think of the logic of it.  First we tell you … you better pay attention and do ‘x’, ‘y’, and believe ‘z’ OR ELSE.  Then later we tell you … ignore all that; it is really about God’s love for you that He did all the work to save you.  Which is the lie?  They do seem to be mutually exclusive.  It is because we do not approach the interpretation of prophesy from a focus of love.  We approach it with intentions to scare, to startle, to wake up.  It is wrong.

The end-of-the-world comes for ALL of us at different times, basically when we die.  If you think about it in those terms, poor Tim Russert faced the end of his world today.  I am saddened at the loss of Tim.  I greatly enjoyed his work and will remember watching him on Meet the Press with fondness.  His replacement will have big shoes to fill.  But Tim is no more.  He was not ‘planning’ to die.  It was a sudden and massive heart attack.  He did not know it was coming.  He thought just like I think, that we would have many more years to share, to love, to live, and to enjoy.  Sadly he has no more seconds, let alone years.  His judgment is now sealed.  No more second chances to repent of some cherished sin, no more time to get back to God.  Just gone.  The end-of-the-world is like that.  It is just going to be a on a broader scale.

So how should I meet this unexpected end?  By valuing each moment I have left today.  By treating every minute as if it were truly my last.  By learning that service to God is of infinite value, and the singular way to find happiness.  By removing evil from my life as fast as possible, allowing God full control to rid me of my cancer, not go looking for new ways to contract the disease.  You begin to see a pattern here.  It is not fear of death or the end of the world that adds any real meaning to my life today.  It only causes me to keep in perspective what is truly important.  It is not time away from God that I value, it is time spent with Him.  It is not the bondage of sin I wish to continue, but the freedom from it.  I do not live in fear, but in love.  This is where we have turned the interpretation of prophesy on its head.  We have approached the entire matter upside down.

End times are not warnings to cause us to fear God.  They are proclamations and measurements about how close to God we are getting – in short, how near to HOME we finally are.  The end-of-the-world is not fear inspiring, nor should be the prospect even of our imminent demise.  It is only a yard stick to measure the value of love we exude every moment of every day.  Evangelism needs no fear.  It needs to help us refocus on the ONLY thing that was ever important – how much we love.  We must learn to take back Evangelism to its core, and return to messages of real meaning and not be satisfied with less.  We must forsake fear for love …

Chocolate Answers ...

Our quest thus far is to discover the meaning in our existence, to determine the nature of God’s goodness towards us, and to draw closer to Him beginning that relationship that will last beyond the boundaries of this simple world.  In this quest we pose many questions to God and wonder about what He must think.  We ask for things.  What happens when we get them?  How do we handle receiving an answer to our questions?  When an answer comes, what then?

It is somewhat easier to pose rhetorical questions than real ones.  We think we already have an answer to our query so all we are really doing is reinforcing a predisposed argument.  This is how, very often, scripture is interpreted.  We come to the Bible with all our predispositions, looking for texts that enforce our point of view rather than detract from it.  If we encounter a text we cannot easily explain, we write it off as a ‘mystery’ of the word and maintain our original theories without so much as a momentary pause to exhale.  This is unfortunate.  This kind of ‘closed’ mindedness when approaching the study of God’s word leads to the revelation of very little personal truth.  Our opinions are already in the way of our study.  The Bible is actually fairly self explanatory about most truths and when we allow for it to truly teach us, and truly answer our questions – it does. 

Most of the time, the problems we get into about the answers we get, is our dislike of what they say.  You see the revelation of truth to us, has to come in fairly small doses or it would overwhelm us.  We exist so incredibly FAR from perfection that the journey to it would seem impossible if we could see the end of the road from where we sit.  We would lose hope, give up, and resign ourselves to self-inflicted pain if we contemplated how much personal change is in our future.  But God does not share our negative outlooks and patiently begins working with each one of, showing us just a little bit of truth at a time, and helping us slowly begin to accept it, digest it, react to it, and finally embrace it.  Then we get the next piece of the puzzle.  How much of this work we go through in this world depends quite a bit on how we treat the answers we get.  Keep in mind this work is not to save us, it is because we are saved that we begin the process of living better and with less and less pain in our lives.

If on your journey, I told you for example that you had to give up chocolate from your diet entirely – how good would you feel about it in the short term.  Me not being a great big fan of chocolate, this would not be a huge sacrifice, but just the idea that I could no longer enjoy it under any circumstances would make me sad.   So what do we do with this ‘answer’ we just got about our lives.  After all, a change in diet hits us right where we live, and chocolate of all things (I guess now would be a good time to reveal this is merely an example – all you chocoholics can relax and eat another bite – your safe – this is just an analogy).  But to give up something we seem to like so much; that we take such pleasure in, seems hard to me. 

We might hesitate a little about this request (truth).  We might ask why?  We might not understand the ‘why’ answer.  So now what?  Do we try to comply, or do we write this request off, as a bit loony and decide God could not have really meant it?  But what if He did.  Finding ourselves eating chocolate despite declarations and intentions not to after some period of time seems likely.  Look at the process we go through for every evil we know we need to be rid of.  So it is not whether we find ourselves failing the truth we discovered again and again – it is about our recognition of the need to follow truth in the first place.  Our efforts to ‘obey’ God do count.  And our surrender of our will to Him, can enable the changes he wants to enact in our lives (even if it were to remove something we find so dear).  This accepting of truth and answers becomes important.

Sometimes the timing of why God asks different things of us is quite late in coming.  Take our chocolate example above; it could be that we have a very unique food allergy that will set in upon us in a few years.  We need to be rid of chocolate before this allergy takes hold, as one slip after it could literally kill us.  Of course we won’t know this fact until a doctor examines us a few years from today, but God knew about it now, and is helping us pre-plan now, to save us from ourselves at a later date.  Often God asks things of us for reasons we do not understand at the time, but are in fact for our good.  Remember, God is not arbitrary or cruel.  Evil is.  God would not ask you to remove chocolate from your life to ‘be mean’.  Only to save you from greater pain.  This is true about God’s motives for His answers to EVERY question we pose.  When you do get an answer, you can and should KNOW that it is for your best benefit.

Of course our friends and family may have a completely different view of the benefit of our truth on them.  If we were to give up chocolate and stop buying it altogether, eliminating it from our home, we might discourage other chocoholics from coming over to indulge.  We might risk friendships, offend other family members, etc..  But how bad would our family feel if after the truth of our condition were discovered, they realized their own part in encouraging us to eat and die?  Or how genuine are the friendships that are based solely on a behavior that will prove to hurt us over time?  Giving up chocolate is not something others were asked to do, it was only for us.  So perhaps we should respectfully follow our truth, and explain to our family and friends the reasons we must do so.  The witness to them in coming years may be HUGE if we hold to our guns now.  Keep in mind, following this example is only about self-sacrifice in our own behavior, we compel no one else to follow our own truth.

Sometimes we let logic get in the way of the supernatural.  Keeping with the chocolate example above; we would not have known the ‘why’ part of God speaking to us until it was too late for us to give up the habit we had formed.  Thus since chocolate is not on the forbidden foods list in the Bible, there is no counsel by Christ against eating it.  Logic dictates we should be fine eating it in moderation over the course of our lives.  This is purely a logical deduction based on all the facts we have at our disposal.  And therein we doom ourselves.  We rely upon facts we have at our disposal, instead of trusting a benevolent God who sees beyond our reach.  When faith and logic collide, trust faith.  Your vision is limited, God’s is not.  Your facts are not absolute, God’s are.  Even your motives are not always pure, but again, God’s are.  If it comes to relying on self, or trusting God – go with the winner every time – trust God, He has a better record.

After we find we have embraced the truth and answers God has given us, we seem to find ourselves in another common condition – ungrateful.  Amazing to me, that Christ heals 10 people from the deadliest and most contagious disease on planet earth at the time, and only one comes back to say thanks.  But look in the mirror, yup there goes one of the nine.  How many countless things has God saved me from, and how many have I truly thanked Him for.  But it gets worse.  You see my own personal tendency is to take the credit for victory over evil, and only marginally acknowledge God’s involvement in the process – of course until I crash and burn again.  Ouch!  How horrible and ungrateful am I?  How completely guilty of not following the humble example of the one, and instead rationalizing the behavior of the nine.  Time for a quick thank you note to God.  Yes gratitude is quite helpful for instilling and reinforcing humility.  And humility is the key ingredient to any real change in the character of your life.  Pride on the other hand, was the original source of evil, and a real show-stopper when it comes to giving up cherished habits that will prove our undoing and cause us real pain.

Here is some good news for you.  God knows your limits.  He knows what you are capable of hearing and processing in your life.  So if you have been granted a revelation of truth, count yourself blessed.  You are blessed with a truth you can do something about.  Like all other truth, you can consciously decide to embrace it.  To follow it.  To challenge it.  And to make it part of your existence.  This is the beauty of the answers we receive, they are not beyond our power to accept.  They are tailor made for us as individuals.  This also means that truth for you may not be intended for me, or intended for me yet.  God will bring me to truth as He recognizes my ability to accept it.  This is His job, and He will be the ONLY one who can be successful at it.  Answers are for each of us, not for ALL of us.  This is why our job centers on loving each other – not convincing each other.

I thank God for the answers to my requests.  I thank Him for the answers to my questions.  And I thank Him for the knowledge I am as yet unable to handle, because I know He will reveal it to me only as I am able.  It is so wonderful to be able to trust our God fully.  It is the reason we can accept answers that exceed logic and require faith.

Resolved Whores ...

There are those that teach the Bible says we should give unto others, in order that we might receive for ourselves.  On subscribing to this philosophy, we begin to believe that by giving our offerings, tithes, or performing other “good works” that the blessings of Heaven are poured out on us and that we will become rich as a reward for our generosity.  The book of Malachi describes this a bit.  And to an extent this phenomenon is true, but the cause and effect have been distorted, and in the mean time we have eagerly learned how to be whores.

Women in particular, are quite resistant to the idea that they might be called whores with accuracy.  When a woman marries for money, others are quick to point out it is only another form of prostitution (a legal one).  But the idea that a seemingly faithful woman, who has not strayed out of her marital vows, and whose reason for marrying was indeed love – to be called a whore is a quite unpleasant thing.  Men, in general, are more accepting of being called this term, merely writing it off to the “error of their youthful pursuits”.  But to tell a man that he may be actively selling his love or his honor for money, would not go down so smooth either.

But how do you ask, can an entire generation be classified under this cruel kind of banner?  Well it begins this way … First, I am not referring to physical sexual fidelity.  Sexual expression, as we have discussed in prior blogs, is really at heart an expression of supreme intimacy with another person, a unity of mind, body, and soul.  This is the kind of unity God would like with each of us (the unity of mind and soul – not so much body).  God’s love for each of us is unconditional and complete.  He reaches out to us before we are even aware He is there.  But our God is not a pimp, nor a “john” walking the streets looking to score.  He does not offer us blessings in exchange for our performance (or good works).

In point of fact, our God offers us blessings in spite of what we deserve.  The sun and the rain fall upon the wicked and righteous.  God pours out His love on each of His children, despite whether they may love Him or not – the fact is, He loves them.  Ever wonder why it seems that the wicked prosper?  How do all those fat-cats on Wall Street get there?  How do all those rich Saudi oil princes get so rich?  We may not like those folks too much, after all their wealth is earned by our collective sweat, but God still loves each of them.  He works hard with each “rich” person in the world, just like He works hard with you or me.  When someone like a Warren Buffett, or a Bill Gates decides to give back – the impacts are felt globally.

But the best part about Warren or Bill giving back is that they have no expectations of getting even richer from their charity.  They are truly giving money away, not expecting to see it again.  It is not a bribe to the man upstairs, in order to gain favor, or worse, get rich quicker – it is a true gift back to the world, and those in need.  Those who pursue scripture as a giant vending machine in the sky, are completely missing the point on how blessings are gained, and what it means to be truly rich, truly free, or truly loved – they are in point of fact – resolved whores.  They resolve only to give when they can gain, or as a means of it.  They are selling their love to a God who is refusing to buy.

So then, what is the motive to ever give?  The reason why this idea is so popular from Christian pulpits that you must give in order to receive, is that ministries rely on donations.  If a minister told you to stop giving, he would be holding a gun to his own ministry’s head.  If he told you that God would bless you regardless of your worthiness, and regardless of your giving level, you might get greedy wouldn’t you?  After all this is what the Israelites did with all their blessings in the olden days, they just kept on accumulating.  The whores of old had ambitions of becoming bankers.  Instead of giving back, they took the blessings and used them to earn even more wealth and more blessings and became even richer as a people – kinda like us today – we try to use each gift to make us wealthier and invest little in giving back to the world.

But again I ask, why give at all?  Christ told the rich young ruler to sell ALL that he had, give it to the poor, and come follow Him.  Why sell everything?  Wouldn’t he then be poor himself, destitute of all the world’s wealth, is not this counter-intuitive?  The rich young ruler thought so and went away sad, he would rather keep his wealth, than become the 13^th apostle.  Amazing the pull of wealth on the soul.  Maybe this why we should start looking as wealth as more a burden on us in a spiritual sense, and less of a blessing in itself.  With wealth comes ease, complacency, and perhaps even increased selfishness.  Yet Christ’s own words contained a blessing that was consistent with the rest of scripture, he said if the rich man sold ALL his stuff, he would have – “treasure in heaven”.  This was promise of true wealth, this was a promise ALL of us greedy folks can sink our teeth into.  Was Christ referring to golden crowns adorned with diamonds the clarity of the sun, with more carrots than Bugs Bunny might enjoy?  Was Christ referring to a social structure in heaven where wealth would designate prominence even in a heavenly kingdom as some might enjoy here on earth?  What kind of treasure was He referring to?

A widow gave 2 mites (or think of it as two pennies) in church.  Her gift was small, but it was ALL she had, and as such Christ declared she gave more than all those around her who were giving massive sums into the till.  Her treasure was her.  The rich man’s promised treasure was the widow, and the poor people whose lives would be changed by the rich man’s generosity.  There would be PEOPLE in heaven because of the changes they would see in the life of the rich man who gave it all up to be with Jesus.  He would have had a ministry of his own.  After the death and resurrection of Christ he would have been one of the 12 who would have had great deeds, great works, and a great testimony.  His wealth would be measured in souls, in heaven, where only PEOPLE matter.  This is the only true wealth.

The reason to give, is not to receive, the reason to give is the reward in the giving.  Christ does not PROMISE wealth in this world, but in the next.  Christ places value on the only world that matters, the one that lasts.  He points our focus from off of ourselves and on to others.  He echoes the entire governmental structure of heaven by serving others Himself, and asks us to join in this work.  The serving is the gift.  The giving is the reward.  The blessings that come from this are in the heart of the giver and in the soul of the servant.  They can ONLY be understood by those who give.  It is the internal transformation of the core of who you are that takes place when you give to another without expectations of reward.  The happiness you bring to others, echoes in your own heart and mind.  The change you bring to another’s life may wind up being what was needed to point that person back to God and thus you connect them with the source of all saving love.

To join Christ in this work through giving, through serving, you learn how to truly love – not simply to be whores.  Resolve not to do, but to give up to Christ.  Resolve not to perform, but to be willing to be used by God.  Resolve not through the power of your character or stubborn ability to get things done, but commit to Christ to rely on His strength, on His promises, on His mercy.  It is only Christ on who you can rely.

Our God and Our Money ...

Television evangelists have largely given God quite a black eye where it comes to our God and our money.  They present a picture of a greedy God who demands your last two cents in order for you to receive any kind of blessings from Him; sort of a paid-off Santa Clause.  This is unfortunately not a new idea.  The Catholic Church spent the better part of the dark ages selling pardons for the living and the dead, largely to poor illiterate believers who were just doing their best to follow what they believed; the same type of victims who fall prey to the televangelists of today.

So what does God want for us with respect to our financial management life?  The first thing to learn, is the concept of true ownership.  In order to own something, it is equivalent to being able to control it.  Humans, particularly Americans, are quite fond of the idea of ownership.  We like to own our things.  Sometimes we try to own people.  We enjoy the idea of owning our success, owning our own destiny - our fortunes left in our hands.  All ideas we embrace.  All of them mistaken.  Just when you think everything is going your way, some unforeseen thing enters your life and changes everything you thought.  The saying “life is what happens while you’re busy making plans” is rather appropriate.

The truth is we are NOT in control of our lives.  We are at the mercy of events beyond our control, like disease, warfare, global economic influences, weather, a whole list of things we cannot change.  As I write this blog, there are a series of fires burning all throughout the state of California.  Many people will lose everything material they ever valued, some of it will be replaced, but not everything.  In point of fact, they are at the mercy of the blaze.  We cannot through will alone, save our homes from the fire, extend our aging process, remove all our weaknesses, add inches to our height, etc..  In addition, there are those who study, work hard, are diligent and never seem to ‘catch a break’.  They do not wind up millionaires.  They live, work, and die all without recognition or wealth.  We really do not control our destiny.  God can if we allow it.  Satan will, if we do not choose otherwise but we will discuss this further in another post.

So if we do not control anything, perhaps we can never really own anything.  The native Americans who preceded us on this continent were amazed that we thought we could ‘own’ the land.  This was completely senseless thinking from their perspective, as they believed the land ‘owned’ us.  How can you own something that outlasts your very existence?  At some point you will die, and anything in your possession will pass to someone else.  Therefore is it truly yours?  At best, only for a time.  You are a tenant, of your things, not an owner.  You may have temporary influence over the disposition of your things, but any number of factors beyond your control could quickly change all of that.  The only being with a rightful claim to ‘own’ anything becomes God.  After all He is responsible for creating most everything in the first place.  Your ability to use your things is therefore temporary.

Our God knew that our lives required a daily struggle for survival in this world cursed by our choice to embrace evil.  He knew that money (or a currency of understood value) would become necessary as part of the method we use to conduct commerce and survive as a species.  He knew we would spend a great deal of our time here on earth, in the pursuit of our own survival.  And He did not want us to forget what was truly important, and who was actually in control of everything.  So He devised a system for us to give back some of what we would earn to His work.  This is why the concept of tithing (or paying 10% of your income, and more in free-will offerings) was started.  The idea predates the establishment of the Jewish faith (see Abraham giving tithe to Melchizedek a priest of God), and was carried forward through Christ’s day (see the story of the widow’s mite). 

This method of systemic giving requires faith on the part of the believer.   Even in today’s age we look at our money, look at our bills, and realize we do not have enough to pay both God and our creditors.  We reason that God will understand our shortfall, our creditors are not so forgiving.  And in our logic, we deny ourselves the lessons God intended for us to learn.  ‘Evil’ has succeeded very well, in marketing to us the idea, that we need every penny we can collect.  We also need to spend and buy more and more all the time never able to quench the insatiable need to have just a little bit more.  We wind up wrapped in a self-centric cycle of self-indulgement and our concern for others grows less and less.  But as usual with ‘evil’ ideas, this whole process leaves one empty, alone, and completely unfulfilled.

God wanted us to remember that He is truly in control or our lives and our needs.  When we pay Him first, we demonstrate our faith in His ability to meet our needs.  We effectively release control of our money and our lives to our God.  And the beauty is, He NEVER fails us.  Somehow, inexplicably, we meet our needs.  We may not still become millionaires while we pay back to God what was His in the first place.  But we will not die, and most times not even suffer, from learning to give back to God.  God actually promises us that we are unable to out give Him (and no He is not just referring to the gift of Salvation where we stand no ability to compete in a giving challenge).  He promised this with respect to our finances.  And what’s more the Jewish people of old knew this, and used it, and got quite rich in the process.  Some of our predecessors paid 60-70% of their income in tithe, and God returned even more to them.  We admire this level of faith, but frankly I think they were just smart enough to employ a guaranteed method of raising ROI (return on investment).

See therein lays the beauty of God’s design.  He does not need our money.  But we desperately ‘need’ to give it to Him, as the giving process changes us.  Giving, refocuses our priorities away from ourselves and on to others.  Giving, can change the core of our values system away from self-indulgent cycle evil would have us embrace.  Giving, helps us understand the government of Heaven.  Giving, is what our God did FIRST for us and continues to do for us all the time.  Giving, is the secret to finding real joy in your life, finding real fulfillment that no-one can take away.  You want to experience a life altering joy; step out of your comfort zone, get up off the sofa, and find a way to help those poor folks in California who are losing everything in the fires.  Or go help the folks in Louisiana who are trying to rebuild their lives even today after the devastating hurricane that plagued that entire region. 

Or how about just carrying a dollar with you in your upper shirt pocket, or in the visor of your car; so that when you encounter that homeless person on the street corner you can give it to them without judgment.  What the homeless person does with your money is hardly the point; the giving will change you, and maybe change the world.  This is something you can do no matter how poor you are, and trust me it works.  I used to be the first person to judge the authenticity of the reportedly ‘homeless’ person, or his motives for wanting my money – then I realized who I was judging.  Turns out it was me.  I looked in the mirror and saw a picture of selfishness staring back.  Ouch.  I started carrying my homeless dollar ever since, when I was employed, and for years between gigs.  I don’t know how many I have given out, and I have come to realize this small pittance is not enough to make a real difference, I need to do more.  But I would not have ever seen that need, without altering my behavior by giving.  Now I know that homeless person is TRULY my brother.  He is me.  He may well be a direct representation of my God.  I have no right to judge, and am instead SO grateful for the lesson learned from simple giving.

The joy of giving is contagious.  It may lead to painful self examination, but it then leads one to find ways of making even more of a difference in the lives of others.  This is what God intends for us to discover when we begin giving back to Him.  Christians so often feel the need to inject themselves into someone else’s life in order to ‘save’ them from their evil ways.  These Christians feel this need, because the very people they think they need to save, are not seeing these Christians as anything they need to aspire to.  In short guys, we are not living the principles we preach.  I admire President Clinton for his work for the poor, I admire Jimmy Carter for building houses, I admire those who I see making a difference in our world.  Christians are not so admired, because they seem to be equally obsessed with getting the next thing, and not so concerned about the struggling ones right near their own homes.  We don’t need to force the Gospel on to unbelievers, we need to live the principles Christ outlined for us, and the world will come knocking on our doors – wanting what we have found.  That is the way of the Gospel.  That is how words become more than words, and meaning is found in life, even here amongst all this evil and pain.  And it all begins with learning a simple lesson of giving …