Strangely, my stomach feels extra full and I think I may end my night with something plopped into tap water that tickles the nose and causes all sorts of noise to come out of me.
As I let my nightly dose of liberal talk wash around my ears as the Metro whisked me toward my car, the connections between these two events becoming, well, evident, something occurred to me.
Where is the Christian reaction to all of this?
The bright, shiny church down the 5 freeway is saying . . nothing? Though, it is nice to read about kindness. Enjoy!
A little further down the 5 freeway at one of my favorite Hawaiian shirt wearing pastors church? Talk about a revival from the good pastor and, again, nothing of the events from the past two weeks.
A visit to the "wealthy is cool with God" church, uh, whatever you would call them, has a series of blog posts that, while light on the Scripture quoting (OK, there's none), are still pretty good. I almost popped out the plastic and searched for the shopping cart logo. Then, I saw the professional head shots at the top of this page and figured that their needs are already well tended and they seem to have such busy lives that, perhaps, offering a piece of inspiration to counter the disturbing events of the past two weeks would just be a bit too much of a buzzkill.
Gosh, if my eyes ever pop that big and my skin becomes that flawless, I may then make my move to the big time stadium grandstanding, book publishing and fancy car driving that I'm sure God would have in mind for me . . . or not.
The moderator of my church's denomination had a really good post about Dr. Tiller's death and her experience with a women's right to privacy. In all fairness, though, some Christians may lament the lack of Scripture references in the post. You may even wonder about my own lack of Scripture reference in this post, but then again I am not any church's staff member or clergy.
My brief tour of the blogosphere's Christian Corner, it seems, has turned up not a whole lot of perspective, opinion or even a seamless "here's what Jesus would do" twist on these three news events. So, here is what this very amateur Christian has figured out.
Every Christian now has the opportunity to witness. I don't mean "witness" in the traditional sense, though. Whenever a Christian sees, hears or is in the vicinity of an injustice being done to anyone because of the way they look, talk or behave, we have a responsibility to stand up for that individual and represent the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Whether we physically insert ourselves between the two parties, diffuse the situation with distraction or even find someone in charge and bringing the situation to their attention makes no difference. By acting as we would imagine Jesus Christ acting in a similar situation, we are really "witnessing" to others around who may never have seen someone behave as a Christian must behave in the face of injustice.
It is virtually impossible for any of us to stand in the path of an actual bullet, and no one should ever demand that any of us do so. It is a rare individual who can reach through to people as far removed from good as these three gunmen were and turn their beliefs around toward love and reconciliation in time to prevent another senseless act of violence.
Since none of us really knows where the next shocking act of violence will occur, we have no idea whether we are just representing God or being that someone that makes a strong, positive change in someone's life.
It is becoming obvious to me what happens when Christians do nothing.
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