The World's Foremost Expert On My Opinion

You tune into talk radio, television and for years we have heard everyone's opionions on just about everything. Now there are entire news networks with people all day every day giving their opinions. Whether it is an expert opinion or not it is just that...an opinion. Perhaps you are like many people, you love it. You eat it up. You can't get enough of it. Maybe you are like many other people in that you detest it, you avoid it, you turn it off and tune it out.

Although we have developed an immunity to the whirling opinions around us, sometimes there are those that make us stop, look, listen, laugh or lend an ear. They elicit a reaction from us. Pat Robertson, an evangelical Christian broadcaster recently gave his opinion on the air that the president of Venezuela should be "taken out". Venezuelan officials raged. American officials ran for cover. That freedom of speech thing embarassed America internationally. What shall we do? Some Christians applauded Mr. Robertson. Others shrank in embarassment. As Christians, who do we really think we are anyway?

This brings me to my point. America's Christians shouldn't be preoccupied with who leads what foreign government and whether or not they should be "taken out". When believers publicly say things like that they often have to back track and re-explain a new definition of what they really meant so as not to offend - you know, like a politician. American Christians shouldn't be vehemently pursuing political agendas to give the United States a Christian government. The only way to get a Christian government is to elect one, not force non-Christian people to conform to Christian ideals. The last time I checked, the role of believers in Jesus Christ is to "go and make disciples". How many of us are doing that? Go to www.barna.org and find out. It will shock you.

Political pursuits are absolutely everone's right but Christians don't own America. They may say that America was founded as a "Christian nation". I wonder what the native Americans would say if we asked them how Christian the Europeans were when they came, saw and conquered? Ask the slaves who were bought and sold like property by Christians in the Bible belt. Isn't it those people who came and "Christianized" America in the first place? Yes, I realize that there are people who do things "in the name of God" who are absolutely false and wrong. But there is something else going on here that should be addressed for the good of all of us.

America's Christians should be preoccupied with repairing the broken places in people's lives through relationship with them. They should put their resources and efforts into making their private faith a public reality among those who know them. Jesus never demanded that the world act Christian but he did outline for his followers how to be one. He gave grace and love to the most dispicable people in the world and saved his harshest criticism for the most religious. Perhaps we should do the same to ourselves. Of course this is only my opinion.