We Need Jesus

A couple of news articles today have broken my heart.  The first was of nine year old Justice Williams, who hung herself because “she had problems adjusting to the birth of her half-brother.”  Then there’s the case of the 13 year old in Georgia who hung himself safter being labelled a snitch.  Seems little Devin Brown saw someone with a knife, told the authorities, and was bullied so badly he hung himself.

I will admit to a perverse fetish for police and detective-type TV shows.  For a while, they seemed to be the only ones that actually engaged one's intellect and simultaneously entertained.  But lately I’ve had to stop watching some crime investigation shows because they are graphic to the point of seeming sensationalism.  Then I discovered the Investigation Discovery channel.  While it at first seems innocuous enough, I can’t help but notice that it chronicles humanity’s inhumanity to humanity, with titles such as “Dates from Hell,” “Blood, Lies and Alibis,” “Blood Relatives,” “Dark Minds,” “Catch My Killer,” Dead of Night,” Deadly Affairs,” “Deadly Sins,” “Deadly Women,” “Evil, I”, “Evil Twins,” “Facing Evil,” “Fatal Encounters,” “Fatal Vows,”  -- well, you get the point.  It simply seems to chronicle the worst parts of humanity.  We need Jesus.  These shows come eerily close to showing a satanic influence over the world; where is evidence of the Divine influence?

We live in a world where students believe they have a right to behave as they wish simply because they pay tuition; where common sense is not only not common but not recognized, and where parenting, increasingly, has become not a matter of morals, beliefs, conviction, but rather of political correctness and litigation evasion.  We need Jesus.

 

I’m not an eschatologist  (preferring instead the Matthean (24:36) and Markan (13:32) statements rather than the interpretations of the symbols in John’s Revelation).  I’m not going there.  Instead, I’m just going to Jesus, who said “If I be Lifted, I’ll draw…:” the same Jesus who told us to “Go into all the World,” the same Jesus who met so many people right where they were and taught them according to their needs and abilities.

I can’t help but think we Christians have failed if our desire were to be Christ-like, or to bring Jesus to a sin-sick and weary world.  Someone posted something similar a while back, but my thought is that the only people out there who reject the idea of a Supreme Deity are those who have not yet experienced the joy of knowing that Supreme Deity.  Should not the world see Jesus in us?  When we respond to the horrors, the tragedies, the inequities and inconsistencies of this world, how often do we bring Jesus into the situation, versus bringing ourselves?

How much could we revolutionize this planet if we really, truly, applied the Word of God in every area and aspect of our lives?  In all our thoughts, all our words, and all our deeds?  I used to shy away from writing things like this for fear that the “holy people” would somehow think me unworthy.  But I no longer am concerned about that. I’m concerned about the world in which we live.  I believe we need Jesus.

It seems that ever since we Christians decided to abdicate our religious practice to the monks and nuns (I’m talking about about 325CE through perhaps the eighth or ninth centuries, when we went from very intentional practices of our faith to a time when we drifted into supporting monks and nuns who devoted their entire lives to worship and contemplation) – but it just seems that ever since then we Christians have become increasingly less intentional about the practice of our faith.  And when we are not intentional about our faith, it shows.  We’ve allowed political correctness and religious pluralism to shame us out of celebrating our Savior; we’ve gradually abandoned the practices, habits, traditions and teachings that shored us up in our faith; we’ve looked to the East rather than to the Lord; and all the time our collective spiritual power seems to have  weakened.

I have to stop now because I have to go to the gym. Once upon a time, going to worship was just as much a commitment as going to the gym or going to dinner.  Today, it’s much easier to get someone to go work out with you or go out to eat with you than to go to worship with you.  If that’s not a sign that we need Jesus, I don’t know what is….