The Little Green Crusader

I got an email yesterday from a Christian company that was trying to get me to buy an ad in one of their magazines. I quickly read through it and couldn’t help but laugh. They were talking about changing the layout size and said that by doing so they were doing their share to go “Green” to help out the environment. The way I read it made it sound on par with some company deciding that the earth movement was popular enough that today they had started throwing away their trash, no longer would it litter the streets and I should buy from them because they’re throwing away their trash. Is that really going to influence me? If the environment was the real concern, make the change and don’t bother trying to explain it to me, do it because you care, not because of the business ramifications.

I’m sure at this point you’re wondering where in the world I could possibly be going with this. Well, over the years I’ve found that you can always tell what someone believes based upon if they do it when it’s not the popular thing to do. In fact, we’re about to enter a world where a lot of what the Bible teaches isn’t going to be “popular” or “mainstream” and you’re going to find that many Christians you thought were solid really have a very shallow belief system. Whether you buy into the whole global warming thing or think it’s a bunch of hogwash is beside the point, I just wanted to give that as an example. Scripture does teach that we’re supposed to be responsible with what we’re given, so cleaning up after yourself is a must, but it’s up to you to decide how far is too far.

Almost everyone of our students are being brainwashed into believing that popular culture knows what’s best for them. Nothing is absolute, the only absolute right is science. Equal rights are defined by 9 people sitting in a courtroom, the bible is irrelevant. We have our work cut out. One of the most important things we can do is really teach our kids that belief matters and it has to be more than skin deep.

I read an article today that talked about some kid getting sent to prison for leaving a cat in the oven and watching it die. I’ll be honest, I don’t like cats. As far as I’m concerned they’re the most useless pets around, but I believe that cruelty to animals is wrong. If I were to walk past some kids dousing a cat with gasoline and setting it on fire, I would act, not because I like the cat, but because my beliefs outweigh my feelings. If I feel that strongly about an animal, how much more should my beliefs in the bible and what God says influence my actions.

Beliefs have to be deep, which means we need to make sure that we’re driving home the reliability of the bible and that it truly is the word of God, not just another history book. This is the center of our lives, not a side note that we can pick the parts we like, it’s central to our lives in Christ. Our beliefs need to be strong, it may make us look intolerant at times, but we need to have a backbone. Rom. 3:4 puts it rather bluntly, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” God isn’t afraid to stand alone on what’s right.

Obviously there has to be tact in how we present it, but never let your desire to be “relevant” overshadow your true beliefs, if you do that, you’ve lost the battle. Make sure you take a long hard look before you ever jump on the bandwagon, or you just might find that being the little “Green” crusader this week leads to the rainbow one next week, etc. Pretty soon your quest to be relevant will make you the most irrelevant preacher the world has ever seen, but then again, you just might have a lot of company in the days to come, God help us.