As I write this right now I am on the phone with a state government office and have been on hold for the last 56 minutes and counting...and counting. Now while I can appreciate that this is a busy office with important work, I do think that this is inefficient at best and dereliction of duty at worst. If I were a more cynical person I would think that this war on the auditory senses (repitition of only 20 bars of the worst elevator music I have ever heard) is designed to get people to give up. This may seem like an overreaction from a frustrated citizen but you must understand I was hung up on by a computer 5 times in the last two weeks because "they were experiencing greater than normal call volume and should call back later." This is why I happen to be a small goverment conservative politically.
The only problem with my political ideas is that if the goverment gets out of the "helping people" business, it appears to be in lately, that vacuum must be filled by the faithful of our towns, states, and country. That may sound like a great idea to you and at first glance it did to me too. One would ask what's wrong with the idea of churches doing the charitable work? After all didn't Christ teach us to love our neighbor as we love as ourselves, and didn't Paul write to Timothy that the goal of the apostles instruction is charity/love from a pure heart?
I am afraid the sad fact is that while Christ modeled caring for those who were sick and dying in sin and its consequence and Paul reaffirmed that model again and again, the church would still be no more effective than the goverment. Why you ask. One must first look at the main work left by Christ for the church, to make disciples. Would it shock you to know that in this country a majority of people still profess to be Christian? That is great news for the church right? Well not so much because the majority of those same self professing Christians do not believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life in heaven one of the most central aspects of all Christianity. If that were not bad enough it seems that even right now the universal body of Christ is growing exponentially on every inhabited continent on Earth except North America, home of two of the wealthiest countries in the world.
So when you go to bemoan the ineffectiveness of the goverment as I know almost all of you will. Or when you start to complain about how inept the employee at Walmart or McDonald's seems to be. Stop and think a moment about whether or not you are being as effective as possible at the most important job a Christian has, making more Christians. It is easy to complain about other peoples actions (or inactions for that matter) while we judge ourselves by our best intentions. Maybe we should rechannel that energy into being more effective in all that we do but most importantly to be more effective for the Kingdom of God.
I know that is what the Bible has called us to do and we need to get on it or one day when we really look into our mirrors we will find that we are as just as ineffective as a huge goverment. May God bless us with mercy and grace as we continue on the route of righteousness He has called us to.
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