Monday, June 19, 2017
553 - Best of Intentions
Spirituality
Column No. 553
June
20, 2017
Common
Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Best of Intentions
By
Bob Walters
I
know it’s June but bear with me. A
couple of Christmases ago I sat in a Christmas Eve church service that led off
with a fearsome video that featured a frantically voiced inventory of horrible
world events and dreadful, life-deadening cultural trends.
“We
need Jesus now!” was the intended message – sure, a perfect sentiment to
frame the celebration of the birth of Christ, the living God and Savior – but
all I could think of was that scene early in the movie Scrooged where the airliner blows up.
Scrooged
is a send-up of Charles Dickens’ 19th century A Christmas Carol, with Tiny Tim, the three ghosts visiting the
miser Scrooge, etc. If you missed
the1980s comedy, Bill Murray plays a heartless TV network president (ala Scrooge)
who successfully, in his mind, causes public panic using terrifying images – an
exploding airliner, terrorists, riots, etc. – in a promo spot for a Christmas
Eve TV special. It’s a small and silly part
of that movie and at this moment it is summer not Christmas (I get it), but let’s
entertain a few thoughts about our intentions as Christians and the dwindling
expectations of the world around us. The
civic silliness is becoming ever more serious.
And it’s always a good time to think
about the coming of Jesus.
We survey the modern, secular,
out-of-control, alarming, worldly and human landscape, encountered whenever we
dare to engage sleight-handed and disingenuous daily media that most of us grew
up trusting, a trust now lost. Can we agree it has never been more important to
pay attention to and guard our own Christian faith? And to do it in intentional ways such as
prayer, praise, good works, fellowship (church) and study?
What I do know is that Jesus is just
fine and His promises are intact. I know
that the Bible defends itself and that the church – as Jesus intended it – will
last. God is the Father. The Holy Spirit is as near and comforting as
our sincere prayer, and I know that in the end it is Satan – not me – on that
airliner that blows up. I don’t worry
about that.
But it is also obvious that the
world-wide culture today is using the never-before-in-history-available tools
of instant mass communication to promote the devil’s worldly bidding: to challenge
every human heart against the plain, loving, righteous and glorious truth of Jesus,
and instead invite the human chaos of truthless individualism, faithless
communities, morally-vacant education and integrity-vanquished political
“social justice.”
Naturally, those same communication tools
are available to Christians, but while the mass media reaches the masses en masse, it is Christ who can reach the
individual human heart with the peaceful and saving message of God’s grace,
kingdom and eternity. We can worry
ourselves to death about Satan’s activities, or we can – with the militancy,
creativity and immediacy of our minds – intentionally choose to keep our minds
on Godly things, our bodies away from Satan’s temptations, and our love of God
and others unwavering and abiding in Jesus.
(Galatians 5:16-22 and Philippians 4:4-9)
Intentionality’s downside invites legalistic
rules and unforgiveness, but its saving upside is alertness of mind and focus
on Christ, one strengthened heart at a time.
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