What Fires Me Up

I was quite surprised to see that the former PA senator, Rick Santorum, did so well in the Iowa caucuses last night. It shocked me, to be perfectly honest. On Facebook this morning I mentioned how he appears to me to be an angry person and I often refer to him in my mind as the "angry evangelical." What popped into my mind next what the question, "What about you?" The question was less of an accusation and more of a gut check for me. I am an evangelical (though I am significantly opposed to many of the views of the modern "evangelical" movement) and I do have some very strong feelings and do find myself fired up on occasion. So the question is whether I have a right to say in an accusatory way that one person is an "angry evangelical" and I am not. The big difference between me and say, Rick Santorum (or other evangelical conservatives like him), is WHAT and WHO we get fired up about.

I do not get fired up when I see non-Christians that do not act like Jesus. If a person does not follow Jesus, why would I expect them to try and live like him? This is in stark contrast to most of the evangelical church today. They get fired up over "sin" that is "rampant" in this country and in "hollywood" and the "public schools." Then they take that often angry passion to the government where they use violent force force to compel people to look more like Jesus. This manifests itself in laws of prohibition against sexual activities, drugs, bad language, abortion, etc. The question becomes, is this a good thing?

Jesus was a good person and lived a perfect life. He told His followers to be like Him, so that's what we strive by the power of His Spirit to do. But where did He say that we are to use violence to force people to look on the outside like Him even though in reality they don't follow Him? The fact of the matter is that He never said that. Jesus said, "Those who live by the sword die by the sword." Violence gives birth to more violence. What Jesus brought was an alternative to government violence as a means to get people right with God. That was tried by the Israelites in the Old Testament under the Mosaic law and proved to be a miserable failure. By the time Jesus came, the people of Israel were not followers of God, but hypocrites who followed the law on the outside (because of force of violence) even though they were not right with God on the inside where it really counts. What Jesus brought was a better way than force of violence. He brought love and told His followers that they will be known by their "love" not violence.

What fires me up is when people who claim to follow Jesus today, ignore His message and go back to the old way of using violence to make people look right. That is what the vast majority of evangelical conservatives are trying to do today. By doing that, they are misrepresenting Jesus to the whole world. Rather than Jesus being the one who paid the penalty for our wrong so we don't have to, He becomes the policeman ready to hurt you for not doing what is right. THAT IS NOT JESUS.

Jesus showed us what the antidote is to a world drowning in pain and sorrow. The antidote is love, Jesus' love. We don't fight with the weapons of the world, we fight with love. If that's how the church lived, then the world would truly know us for our love. I turned on the Michael Savage show last week and heard a popular evangelical say we need to "wipe [fundamentalist Islamist Palestinians] off the map." It broke my heart. That sounds more like Hitler than Jesus.

The world may use hate against us, but we are called to show only love. It might cost us dearly (in fact, Jesus promised it would), but it is the ONLY way to accurately be Jesus to a lost and dying world.


“Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him... Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” -Jesus (John 13.31-35)