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Is our Christianity Alive...or Creepy?
- David Brown
- Aug 22, 2011
- Category: Christianity
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I grew up in church. I've sensed God's presence in church services since I was a small boy. I can clearly remember the Holy Spirit moving and manifesting himself powerfully during the song services, the preaching and the altar calls of the evangelical church where my family and I attended. Those were special times...moments you could literally sense the presence of God. There was something about those special times. They were somehow filled with life. That's the only way I know how to say it. The very life of God came into our midst.
I remember too that not everything we did at church seemed so alive. There were plenty of moments, events, functions which felt...well...not alive. They seemed normal, usual, perhaps necessary, but pretty perfunctory, painfully predictable and miserably methodical. They seemed traditional, laborious, boring, and cold. This is too often the experience of many Christians. The atmosphere they live and worship in isn't at all warm and alive but strangely cold and sort of “creepy”. Did Jesus intend Christianity, Christians or churches to be creepy? Isn't this a problem. Don't you think a lot of people are turned off to the creepiness of religion?
Of course, not every moment of Christian experience can be exciting and emotionally overwhelming. Every church service is not supposed to be just a real good feel good time! We go through times of difficulty, sacrifice, grief, temptation and persecution. But even then, we are promised the help of a loving God who makes us strong in the midst of our weakness. The Holy Spirit can and does comfort us in such times. But, should our Christianity seem laborious, cold or even boring during the normal day in and day out of our spiritual experience?
In my travels, I've visited many Christian churches and chapels. I've seen everything from Westminster Abbey in London to country campgrounds and falling down tabernacles. I've also been in the meeting halls of cults, several Hindu shrines and on one occasion came as close to entering a Moslem mosque as they would let me without taking off my shoes. You know what? Strangely, they all felt about the same. I've visited some of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world from Latin America, to New York City to some of the most luxurious, beautiful and historic ones in Europe...and even they felt strangely creepy. I'm talking about the atmosphere, the air, the spirit of the place. Sadly, a Christian church can be just as dead and creepy feeling as a Hindu temple where they worship the monkey God. Believe me, a Hindu shrine is a creepy feeling place. But some Christian churches are the very same! The name over the door doesn't really make much of a difference if creepiness has been allowed to saturate the atmosphere.
What should people sense when they come around us...and what should they experience when they attend a church's worship service? Traditional rituals? Cerebral exercise? Boring lecture? Cultural enrichment? Strange feelings that make the hair stand up on the back of their necks? Or even worse, lightness and frivolity that leaves their souls absolutely empty?
What should be the outstanding, impacting characteristic of a vibrant faith in Jesus, or the experience of those who connect with his followers in a time of worship?
I think it should be life. I think it should be a powerful, observable, tangible aliveness!
Jesus didn't come to give us a creepy religion or weird emotional feelings. He came to give us something quite different than any of the worlds' religions offer.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of Go hath not life.
1 John 5:12
Jesus said...
The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you – they are full of the Spirit and life.
John 6:63
Jesus imparts life! His words bring life! His Spirit manifests life! The experience of the true and living God is to be a living experience! Aliveness should saturate everything we do and believe about God and about his Son Jesus of Nazareth! I really believe that we as Christians should do everything in our power to inject Jesus, His Words and His Spirit in everything we do. These are the life giving elements of the Christian faith.
Jesus, His Words and His Spirit should saturate our teachings, songs, services, events, ministries, outreaches, missions, art, architecture, productions, plans, visions and dreams. Jesus, His Words and His Spirit should saturate everything we do...our entire existence.
Life should be injected into the Church and every believer in Jesus!
Have you ever been to a cemetery? Creepy, right?
Death is creepy.
Aliveness is not!
Jesus is alive!
Let's be like him!
- David Brown
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