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Live and let live too far?
I am not in the least athletically inclined. I never have been. I was always the last little girl picked to play on a team. With good reason. If it was softball, I was sure to strike out. If it was volleyball I had a perfect aim, hitting the wrong side of the net dead center on every serve.
It wasn't just team sports either. Don't even ask me about tennis.
OK, since you asked ... When we bought our home in Brighton we were excited to be just yards away from a lovely park, complete with the latest in playground equipment, a picnic shelter and a tennis court.
We picked up a couple of rackets at a yard sale, a tube of bouncing yellow tennis balls, and we let fly.
Until a friend came and recorded my attempts to decipher the secret of "love" on video.
I never picked up a tennis racket again and gave the tennis balls to Archie and Sassy, who thought they were invented just for their pleasure.
Not being athletically inclined, I brought home very few ribbons, and never once a blue ribbon. Most of mine were "consolation white."
By the time my children were competing, everyone who participated got a ribbon so everyone could walk away feeling good about themselves.
The phrase "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," seems to have been replaced by "If you can't say something nice, make something up," in our national attempt to be ever and always politically correct, never hurting anyone's feelings, never excluding anyone, never daring to even allude to the fact that maybe, just maybe, they should try something else, because where they are and what they're doing just isn't their niche.
That isn't all bad. There is enough negativity to go around, and rudeness, even in these politically correct days, seems to never be in short supply.
But there is a danger, a real and present danger, associated with the whole "live and let live" philosophy we have embraced.
Christianity has never been and can never be politically correct. It is, by its very nature, exclusive. Not because of the color of a man's skin, nor even to the content of his character. It does not exclude based upon social status or origin of birth. You can be very old or very young, and still be included -- male or female, slave or freeman. The only ones who are excluded are those who do not believe.
What must you believe? First of all, that God is. And that he is holy and we are not. A seemingly irreconcilable state of affairs until Jesus, the Christ, God's own Son, took away our unholiness and made us holy in the sight of God. We are, by believing in him, therefore reconciled with the God of creation, and have a promised eternity in his kingdom. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
But Christianity seems to have forgotten the exclusivity of the cross.
In our attempts to attract people to Jesus, or perhaps to make ourselves attractive to others, we have seriously compromised the word of truth.
To wit: A friend back home recently attended the funeral service of a former co-worker.
She felt like she knew this person fairly well, and made what she thought was a pretty safe assumption that her co-worker was also a Christian.
After all, she was an active member of a mainstream Protestant church, had a strong work ethic and a compassionate nature. There was nothing about her that would indicate that her spiritual beliefs were anything other than that of other Christians.
Until the service began, at the co-worker's mainstream Protestant church where she was a member.
The minister addressed the issues of life after death by admitting to those who had gathered that "we can't really know what happens to us after we die. Some believe our spirits wander the Earth, others, that our souls return to God, and still others believe that they will live again, in a different human body."
My friend was squirming in her seat by this time, for this theology was unfamiliar to her. She, quite naturally, assumed that since she was in a mainstream Protestant church of which the deceased had been an active member, she would hear of the redemptive power of Jesus' blood, his work of atonement, and his promise of a place prepared for those who would believe and follow him.
Instead she heard that her former co-worker ascribed to the final option offered by the speaker and believed that she would be reincarnated, to live again this earthly life, beginning to begin all over again.
Is this then the "ear-tickling" we read about in Scripture? Does it somehow feel better to sing "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a 'soul' like me"? Has it become unfashionable to at least be honest with ourselves and admit our wretchedness as we appear, apart from Christ, in the eyes of a holy God?
It is a frightening turn of events, and not an isolated case.
Dear ones, if your heart's desire is to have your ears tickled rather than your heart pricked, then do so, but do so with the understanding that what you are living and what you are teaching is not Christianity.
Back to the phrase "live and let live." I can do that. I don't make a habit of asking people their personal lives, habits and manner of worship.
But I cannot let this pass without comment, for it goes beyond "live and let live" and crosses the line to "live and let die."
"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned." Galatians 1:8 (NIV)