Giving them reason to blaspheme

Posted on November 28, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 7 Comments

The church has given non-believers cause to blaspheme the name of God. How have we done this and how can this error be avoided?

An encouragement to love

The church is to up the ante by going beyond love for the members and loving those who are enemies (Matthew 5:43-44). We are to be identified by our love for those both inside and outside the membership ranks.

On those who have walked away

Honesty demands that we admit our struggles to work out our faith. Real faith is at times a gritty mess and we all face difficult times. My experience is that God remains faithful even when we are faithless, as Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 2:13. Feeling doubt and even expressing doubt does not automatically disqualify someone from being relationship with God.

No room for rancor in the church

Rather than getting all worked up about your Christian brother who has a different idea about what the government should or should not be doing, why not offer to pray with him.

An AHA moment

The only problem with this distortion is that in a fallen, broken world, there is a lot of stuff to be angry about. Even as very young children we encounter things that should make us angry.

The danger of Method-Du-Jour thinking

Some church does something. It appears to be successful based on attendance numbers. Others then seek to find the method or program that was used to generate the good result. We shorten the sermon, use video feeds, turn up the music, redesign the décor, or hire consultants to try to produce similar results.

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Giving them reason to blaspheme

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