Are you Standing on Jell-O?

This morning as I read Shaycam’s blog on a job decision he made, I couldn’t help but think of all the people that would sacrifice their own personal beliefs for a job. I applaud Shaycam for his decision because he actually stood for his convictions. In today’s society we have many people, who like our presidential nominees (Giuliani and Edwards in particular), who say that their faith will not get in the way of making decisions. Why have beliefs at all if they are not going to influence your decision making? I believe we have a growing problem with people who call themselves “Christians”. Both of the men I state above call themselves “Christians” and yet vote for abortion, partial birth abortion and stem cell research. How does that jive with the Christian faith? It doesn’t!

This problem is bigger than that though. It is a problem that lies within our pulpits and what is being taught. We see the Episcopal Church with gay priests, we see the Methodist Church with a transsexual priest and we see many so-called Evangelicals throwing away many Biblical doctrines because they are offensive to our culture. The church is trying to be relevant to the point that it is watering down the effect of sin. The modern church is more interested in culture and the number of people attending than the salvation of the people in the pews. I would cast all the judgment on the preachers, but that would not be biblical. We are to be like the Bereans in Acts, who searched scriptures to verify the teaching they were getting. We as the pew sitters need to be discerning and instead of allowing our ears to be tickled by every type of doctrine, we need to stand for the Truth.

So, how do we go about creating change in a society of pluralism? How do we stand for something as solid as the Word of God when our society tells us that the ground we stand on can only be as firm as Jell-O? Well we start like Shaycam. We stand firm for what we hold as our core beliefs. We are willing to be fired from work because the job goes against those core beliefs. We leave the church that is teaching that homosexuality is acceptable. We do not allow preachers to get away with teaching heresy. We battle for the Truth. Remember this is a war. We use the sword that is the Word of God to strike down the heresies the post-modern church is selling us. At the same time we show the love that Christ showed us. We love those men and women that are caught up in homosexuality and show them that they need to repent and turn from their sin. We need to love unbelievers, knowing that once we were unbelievers and if it wasn’t for the grace of God we would still be wallowing in sin. We battle sin in our churches, we battle the heresies, but we do it in love.

It is my firm belief that by making strong decisions in regards to our faith we impact the people around us. I am confident that Shaycam’s decision impacted the people he worked with. I don’t know what affect it will have on any of them, but at least they know what he stood for. Christianity is not a political system. It is not a political party. It certainly is not a world view that can be turned on and off when we feel like using it so that we can get votes.

Thanks for your example Shaycam!