Welcomed or Converted

OK, so this blog is going to be more about a personal issue than anything else. However, I hope we can all be educated a little by it. My first mistake...this past week I had a little free time at the office and I decided to go roaming in myspace land. I have an account for the youth group and am registered as attending all the local high schools. Whenever I see that there are "new students" in those schools I go add the newbies to the myspace friends list so that they can know what's going on and maybe get involved. Like I said, first mistake.

My second mistake...I saw someones name that looked like it had a derogatory word in it...but I could only see half the name because it was a sentence instead of an actual name. I clicked on it and low and behold...yep... the mother of all cuss words right there. So if you know me, you know that I am kind of a guy of principle. I don't let a lot of things go when I think something wrong is going on. So I did what I always do when I see someones myspace that is pretty trashy. My third mistake...I scrolled down to look at the personal stats and look beside "Religion." Can you guess what I saw? Yep, Christian - other. Why I should have just chuckled and thought to myself... "Yeah, I'd say other! More like not at all!" I didn't. I emailed the kid. I say kid because he is younger than me. But he is old enough to drive, old enough to smoke and I am pretty sure he is old enough to fight...so I was treading pretty heavy right then.

In the midst of the email I made up a little funny quip. "The Poser Award." I told him that I was giving it to him because he was the king of all posers. Not only did he have fake "grillz" and kept lifting up his shirt to show his lack of defined abs in all his pictures, but he claimed to be a follower of Christ when the fruit didn't bear witness...pun intended. It wasn't like I didn't see a Jesus fish, wwjd pictures or video clips from the Passion of the Christ crucifixion scene so I just decided that he was a faker...it wasn't that there wasn't any fruit. It was that the fruit was bad! Now I could break into scripture here...but you all know it. A good tree doesn't bear bad fruit like that. Yeah, every once in a while an apple tree will bear a rotten apple due to weather conditions or a sudden onslaught of worms...but not like this. The entire myspace was full of crude jokes about women, filthy language, sexual references and the like.

So I emailed him telling him he was a poser and that it wasn't appreciated that he was doing all this unpaid false advertisement for the Kingdom of God. I then took it a step further...mistake number...oh I lost count. I made an html tag for his picture and link to his myspace and set up a section on ours that had it all and proclaimed him as poser king. I then sent a bulletin to everyone to announce the new award. Later that day I got a response. A high school...I think he is in high school...student emailed me and told me how it was the worst form of evangelism he had ever seen, that I should get in trouble for it, and that it was ridiculous. All of these were probably the absolute truth. But what I didn't agree with was this...

He told me that we are supposed to "welcome everyone into the family of God"...not embarrass them. OK...maybe the embarrassment part was mostly true...I do have a strong argument from scripture against it but I will leave it alone unless someone wants to hear it. Where in the Bible are we instructed to "welcome everyone into the family of God?" Even though some scripture talks about how we treat outsiders and such, the overall theme of scripture about this subject doesn't look anything like this statement. I went on to ask this replier if he had read the entire Bible. He said no.

Here's my point: the church of America...namely the young church of my area is highly uneducated when it comes to subjects of scripture. This replier is a member of the coolest trend that is emerging...the punk rock church. Though it isn't called that by its members, I am beginning to refer to it as such. This breed of Christians are characterized by their love for punk, emo, screamo, and loud music and their belief that church sucks. Most of them go to church, and either hate it or love to make a huge point when they are there.

I heard tonight that several kids from the area this replier is from were all mad at me because of some comment. I knew what the tattle tale was talking about. They are all mad because they think it is mean to tell someone they aren't the "type" of christian I think they should be. And that is one of the biggest problems I have with the punk rock church. I love loud music. But this trend of hating leadership and authority is really beginning to eat away at my patience. The PRC is led by people my age...mid twenties and most of its congregants are 13-19. They love to smoke, get tattoos, and fool around with drugs, alcohol, and their boyfriends and girlfriends and justify it all by the fact that they are imperfect people who love Jesus...and love is all that matters right? Sound familiar... its the same post modern bull honky that is growing in the emergent movement. Its the same crap that the liberal mainline churches have been trying to promote for several years now. Forget all that...its the crap Jesus talked about would happen, and Paul warned was happening back in the first century church.

So here's the deal... should we welcome or convert? Don't get me wrong, I am not some fundamentalist Bible thumper who wants to make everyone fall in line and get changed to look like someone from the 1870's when they get saved. I am totally for progressive culture and the like. But I will NEVER...write it down...NEVER compromise the Word of God when it comes to doing so. If we do that, we no longer have the church, but a stupid, pointless, social club that likes to sing and listen to people talk about mystical stuff...not my cup of tea. People have got to know they are sinners. Sometimes in our area...or any area near the Bible belt you have to "get em lost before you can get em saved." Everyone thinks they are a "christian" because their parents are, or they have gone to church before or because they want to have a box to check when filling out stuff and wouldn't want to have the negative connotation of being called an atheist. But seriously, that's what a person is...if they really believe in God yet live against everything He has set up, you either really don't believe in Him and are an atheist or you are a Satan worshipper because you set yourself up to be god by always doing what you have decided to do.

Many people think you are going to "love" in so many people. And tonight I was thinking about this. And I truly do believe you "love" someone in. I believe you love, accept, and minister to the lost...those who know it and want to change. But when someone becomes a Christian and claimed the name of Jesus as their own, that's where true love begins. Read the Bible people! I guess all the reading the students today are doing is pretty bible study books that teach all the same stuff over and over again. The NT is full of church discipline. Yeah, discipline. The act of a church punishing a person for not living according to the calling they claim to have...as a member of a group of people who believes in Jesus (a Christian). Read it...its pretty harsh. It goes as far as kicking people out and "turning them over to Satan" and stuff like that. And it is all done out of love. True loves wants someone to be right with God. Sometimes that means not being "nice." It means telling the truth.

When I was 17 I thought I had it all together. I was good at putting on a show and getting the right kind of attention. One day true love hit me like a ton of bricks right between the eyes. I was called a poser...in more words. I was told what a fake, phony and fraud I was. I was told the truth. I would probably be going to hell because I didn't look like Jesus, act like Jesus, or even look or act like someone should when they claim to look or act like Jesus. At first I was mad. At first I wanted to punch this guy in the mouth and tell him where he could shove it all. But I didn't. I listened. I took it all in. And almost 7 years later I am living my entire existence for the cause of Jesus' gospel. Some friends of mine at the time told me that this person had no right to tell me what he did. It wasn't his business and I should be mad. These friends aren't following the Lord today. They are confused about who He is and what they should actually do with Him.

So I made some mistakes this week. I really am pretty sorry for them. Just another reason to prove that I am not perfect and need Jesus to save me. And I love Him for that. But at the same time, I hope that somehow God can take my mistake and turn it into a lesson for others. I hope you have learned a little somethin' somethin'.