On Freedom

A few days ago, I was chatting with a friend. I made the comment, "I think the terrorists don't hate us because of our freedom, they hate us because of what we do with that freedom." I then joked about how Americans spent thousands of dollars to put stupid inflatable snowmen on their front lawn, while people in their shadows went without proper food and shelter. Just because we have the freedom to decorate our homes like trailer trash, we don't have to use or abuse that freedom.

Then a few days later I got an email called the Prism ePistle, a service of the ESA. In it, the was the following expert from "Scandal Of The Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like The Rest Of The World?" :

Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most "Christians" regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is their Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate their allegiance to money, sex, and personal self-fulfillment.

The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like Gallup and Barna are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general." Divorce is MORE common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the MOST likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers....

...Our first concern, of course, must be internal integrity, not external danger. What a tragedy for evangelicals to declare proudly that personal conversion and new birth in Christ are at the center of their faith and then to defy biblical moral standards by living almost as sinfully as their pagan neighbors.

If Christians do not live what they preach, the whole thing is a farce. "American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century," Barna concludes, "because Jesus' modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus." This scandalous behavior mocks Christ, undermines evangelism and destroys Christian credibility.

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I was reminded of the words from 1 Peter 2 and Galations 5.

Again, I think it is not so much the freedom, but what is done with the freedom. I for one, know I'm guilty of improper use of the freedoms I've been given.

Currently listening to: Bill Mallonee -