Tone It Down

It has been suggested to me that I need to tone down my teachings about being a Believer. The underlying meaning was that I'm upsetting some people because I'm being too radical in my suggestions that people need to get more in line with love, grace and mercy versus pointing out people's sin. My answer to that is simple: I don't need to tone it down, I need to fire it up!

I haven't said anything that does not come directly from the New Testament section of the Bible. I haven't said anything that doesn't come almost directly from the words in Red in the Bible. My comments come from the sermons and lessons of Jesus Christ, who happens to be my Savior, my Master, my Lord and my example. No, I'm not going to tone it down, because my light has to shine and not be put under a basket. I keep my oil filled so that I won't have to run off somewhere to find more oil just when Jesus returns.

I will continue to question why Believers want to enact laws to govern sin when the whole process of the law governing sin is what required Jesus to be born, live, die and be resurrected because the law will never work to conquer sin. As Paul stated it, the law is there to show me my sin while the cross is there to forgive me of my sin. Believers want the law to force people to behave the way they think they should. They don't want to the law to save people's souls, they just want people to stop committing the sins they find too grievous. Or maybe they just want to feel superior to those who are committing what they call sin. I don't understand it, and probably don't want to understand it. Because it's not the way of God and it's definitely not the teachings of Jesus.

We've become a generation of hypocrites. We want to outlaw abortion but we don't want to do anything for children who are not being taken care of. We want the homeless to not be seen but we don't want to provide shelter for them. We want beggars to go away but we don't want to give them food or water. We want the prisoners to be locked up and never be seen again and we sure don't want to go to the prison to visit them. We want the widows to be taken care of but we don't want to have to give anything out of our pocket for them to be taken care of. We want paradise but we don't want to have to do anything to build it.

I look around at the religious folks in the world and I see the Pharisees and the Sadducees all over again. It's not even a stretch to compare so many of today's religious folks to those of Jesus' time on earth. It's all talk about the law but there's no talk about grace, mercy and what so many today want to call love has no reflection of the love of God. Tough love is a lie of the devil. 1 Peter 4:8 says, "and above all things have fervent love among yourselves: for love shall cover a multitude of sins." It doesn't say that love gives you the right to stop helping people so they'll grow up or become self sufficient. Love covers a multitude of sins means that you forgive them, you act as though that thing never happened and you continue helping them to grow and become self sufficient. It doesn't give you the right to walk away from them. That's not love, that's cowardice, self indulgence and greed.

No, I don't have any intention of toning it down. I'm called to spread the Good News of Jesus; I'm called to share love, mercy and grace. I was born in this time to be a voice for love, grace and mercy; for forgiveness and tolerance. I am to be a light unto the dark to give hope to the hopeless and help alleviate a bit of suffering every chance I get. I'll tone it down when I arrive in Heaven to spend eternity with my Creator. Until then, I think I'll stoke the fire.