Futile attempts at love & relevance

Over at RelevantMagazine.com, Spencer Spellman asks, "Are We Cheapening Our Faith?" Such a question was prompted in his mind when he passed by a church sign that read, "Give Satan an inch and he'll be a ruler."

He opines,

"Is this where the Church in America has come to? Where Christianity is seen and communicated through t-shirts and marquees. We don’t communicate our business projects, vacation plans, and political positions through marquees and t-shirts, so we don’t need to communicate our faith through such means."

His point is that much of Christianity today is stuck in the ghetto of irrelevance, and these gimmicks are our cheap attempts to love our neighbor. Read the short but good article here.

His conclusion:

"The challenge then is to recapture the love of Christ. We will never be able to recapture that love until we stop living out of our own Christian sub culture and start spending time with Christ and with people. C.S. Lewis said it well when he stated: “Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.” Let us be a people who reveal ourselves fully, and better yet, reveal Christ fully."

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If you have the time, the 9marks blog has an interesting and very humorous entry entitled, "We Watch TBN So You Don't Have To." The comments section has an interesting discussion, too, on the place of satire and mockery in the quest for truth. One person opines, "Good satire isn't cruel since the target deserves it. A punch in the face can be cruel if the recipient is innocent, but it's not cruel to punch a mugger."