Alienating The People God Calls Us To Reach?

Romans 5:8 is a very powerful scripture and one of my favorites. It says, "God demonstrated His love toward us, in that while we yet sinners Christ died for us!"  Wow. Imagine that.  God loves the gays who want to make their relationships into marriages.  God loves the doctors who perform abortions. God loves democrats, Muslims, Mormons, and atheist as much as He loves Christians... because he loves people.  No where in the Bible do we have a verse that says, "God loves the sinner, but hates the sin."  What this phrase really has meant by those who use it is that God hates sin, so I need to hate sin like him and alienate people by pointing out their sin and forbidding them to practice their deviate behavior.  But where did Jesus ever assign his people to do this?

I think most people who sense that their responsibility to "Police Others" in the bedroom, are probably addicted to something or come from an addictive background. Why?  Because usually the people who yell the loudest about something are guilty of it themselves.  We are called to examine ourselves (2 Cor. 13:5) not others.  People who are fixated on the lifestyles of others usually have forgotten that their own sin separates them from God as much as the others sins outlined in scripture (Ephesians 4:31  Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:  see also - James 1:26; James 3:5-8; 1 Pet 3:10).  The Apostle Paul to the Gentiles tells the individual Titus to speak evil of no man (Titus 3:2  To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men.)

War on Traditional Marriage?

Fox News is loudly proclaiming that President Obama has declared War on Traditional Marriage!. Really Fox? Then why were divorce rates among Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians the highest in the country since before someone even imagined that Gays and Lesbians should be allowed the same right to marry as other people? Before I am accused of being for pro-gay marriage, let me be clear I am an advocate for traditional marriage. These statistics came, by the way from a Evangelical Christian research institute, the Barna Group, in the year 2000:

Denomination (in order of decreasing divorce rate)

Non-denominational** 34%

Baptists 29%

Mainline Protestants 25%

Catholics 21%

Lutherans 21%

Barna's results verified findings of earlier polls: that conservative Protestant Christians, on average, have the highest divorce rate, while mainline Christians have a much lower rate. They found some new information as well: that atheists and agnostics have the lowest divorce rate of all. George Barna commented that the results raise "questions regarding the effectiveness of how churches minister to families." The data challenge "the idea that churches provide truly practical and life-changing support for marriage."

The data showed that the highest divorce rates were found in the Bible Belt.* "Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma round out the Top Five in frequency of divorce...the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average" of 4.2/1000 people.  Hmmm....

Abortion Rates Among Christians:

 A new study by The Center For Reason (www.CenterForReason.com) finds that Christians have just as many abortions as their non-Christian counterparts. The study concludes that in the year 2000, Christians were responsible for 570,000 abortions. Catholics were found to be the worst offenders, with abortion rates higher than the national average.

San Francisco, Calif. (PRWEB) March 12, 2006 -- With over one million abortions being performed in the US each year, this issue has dominated the political landscape. In recent years the rhetoric has escalated, with the pro-life movement becoming a flagship for Christian morality and ethics. The prevailing Christian doctrine--that abortion is murder--has polarized the issue, firmly placing the vast majority of Christians on the pro-life side of the debate.

Incendiary comments by some of the more outspoken Christian figureheads have sought to portray abortion as an “evil” perpetrated by the non-Christian left. In response to this, The Center For Reason, a private research group, undertook a study to test the premise: “Christians have fewer abortions than non-Christians”. The results disproved the premise.

The study, reveals that Christians have just as many abortions as non-Christians. Data analyzed for all fifty states show that the rate of abortion is the same in the most-Christian segments of the population as it is in the least-Christian. The most-Catholic segments, on the other hand, showed significantly higher abortion rates.

All data sources used in the study are publicly available, and are referenced in the report. All raw data and calculated values are tabulated in the report, to allow full verification of the results.  This research was undertaken to test the premise: “Christians have fewer abortions than non-Christians”. This topic was chosen in response to the very-public stance of certain far-right Christian groups, who assert that abortion is an evil perpetrated by the non-Christian left.

The results disproved the premise. It transpires that Christians have just as many abortions as their non-Christian counterparts. The study concludes that in the year 2000, Christians had approximately 570,000 abortions. Within the Christian segment, Catholics were found to have abortion rates significantly higher than the national average.

Fifty percent of Christian men and twenty percent of Christian women report being “addicted” to pornography. What are we to make of these staggering numbers? 

Compare these numbers to other nationwide statistics:

• A 2001 Forrester Research reported 19% of North American Internet users were “regular visitors” to adult content sites.
• A 2003 Nielsen/Net Ratings reported that an estimated 34 million people visited adult entertainment sites in August and 32 million in September—about 25% of Internet users in the US.
• In 2009, Michael Leahy polled 29,000 individuals at North American universities. 13% of the male students and 2% of the female students reported spending 5 or more hours a week online for Internet sex.
• Sex therapist Barry McCarthy, PhD, concludes that about 15% of men and nearly 5% of women compulsively use porn.

When polled about addictive or frequent porn use, Christian percentages always seem significantly higher. Why? Are Christians simply more likely to get hooked on porn? What is going on here?

We must not forget that, while Christians have been protesting against the sexual sins of our nation - tried to ignore Wikipedia outlines the evidence of scandals in the church:

List of evangelical Christians involved in scandals

• 
  
• Lonnie Frisbee, 1970s–1980s
• Marjoe Gortner, early 1970s
• Billy James Hargis, early 1970s
• Neville Johnson, 1983
• Jimmy Swaggart, Marvin Gorman, Jim and Tammy Bakker, 1986 and 1991
• Peter Popoff, 1987
• Mike Warnke, 1991
• Robert Tilton, 1991
• Melissa Scott, 1992
• Jim Williams, 1994
• W. V. Grant, 1996 and 2003
• Ian Bilby,1998
• John Paulk, 2000
• Roberts Liardon, 2001
• Pat Mesiti, 2001
• Paul Cain, 2005
• Wayne Hughes, 2005
• Earl Paulk, 2007
• Todd Bentley, 2008
• Michael Guglielmucci, 2008
• Michael Pitts 2009
• Eddie L. Long, 2010
• Marcus Lamb, 2010
• Benny Hinn and Paula White 2010
• Ted Haggard, 2011

 The unfortunate thing is that these types of scandals are used against the Body of Christ to alienate people from the Gospel.  Don't get mad at me when I point this out!  This is how people within the American culture see the church:

Our world is a place of alienation and brokenness. Christ calls us to reconciliation and wholeness. He calls us to remember That while we "TOO" we yet sinners, Christ loved us so much he died for us as much as he died for those BIG  sins we keep harping on in others.   We need to ask ourselves:

-”Is Protesting a means of How We Reach the World for Christ?”
-”How do people on the other side see us?  Is the message we preach filled with  judgementalism and   condemnation.”

-”Let’s not risk alienating people we want to reach for Christ merely so we can make a political statement.”

 We are called to minister to all people of our world, knowing that the world is often an unloving place. Our world is a place of alienation and brokenness. Christ calls us to reconciliation and wholeness. 2 Cor. 5:18 says "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation."  We are challenged by the Gospel to be agents of healing within our  world... not politician trying to build a "religious state"!  Let's stop the rhetoric and address the sin within the church and then offer hope to others in our nation.