Disclaimer: This post is not for the non-christian. Feel free to read it, but it'll likely make you angry that people think like I think.
Recently I lost my father. It has been a torrent of emotions. To be honest and transparent the emotions of apathy, joy, anger, sadness are just some of the emotions I have been dealing with. The reason why I am telling you this is because death or terrestrial separation is painful. Duh!
What does the verse have to do with my dad?
My dad, in earthly terms did perish. He didn't pass as a fool. He knew Jesus and him crucified and raised up. However, when I couple all the pain and emotions with the above verse and a recent discussion, I birthed a thought.
Before telling you the thought, some details: The conversation was one about the craziness of religious people in general. In this conversation, which happened on facebook, (if the link doesn't work, my friend might have changed his privacy settings,) I tried to tactfully engage a friend's dismay of religious extremism.
Now he wasn't rude but used an open forum to make his discomfort known. In response a friend of his was very abrasive in regards to my, "bullshit ass abrahamic religion." I can take a little abrasion, but he expressed that he believes that my faith is foolishness, including the cross.
Now please don't jump down my throat...or in this case my keyboard, I have no scope of God's plan for anyone's life. Sometimes I struggle with God's plan for my own life. So to say that my friend's friend is "perishing" is too much of an assumption for me to make. He does however, fit the criteria for the above verse that he thinks the cross is foolishness, which then begs the question, "IS HE PERISHING?"
but I am after all...
What if the main symptom of those who need you to be a witness, to put your best self forward, to exemplify what it means to be a christian and to love your enemies. What if the main symptom was the expression, "The cross is foolishness!"
Knowing the pain associated with the loss of my dad, I have been plagued with thoughts of others losing their parents and death in general.
We will all lose our parents. We will all lose our first loves. We will all lose our brothers and sisters and close friends. Some of us will even experience the loss of a child. Those of us that don't ever get that experience it is because we became that experience for someone else.
If I am this wounded at terrestrial seperation, how deeply wounded is God at eternal separation?
What if the someone's eternal health or the degradation thereof was tied to the claim that, "Christians are fools?"
Then I would say this: Christians, can we please stop being wounded by people's claim that we're idiots? When they claim we are fools, rather than letting our ego and sense of pride dictate that we are under attack and that we must pull out our apologetic creation machine to defend our position of faith. Can we try this instead,
- Feel God's pain radiate through you as his love becomes magnified by his loss.
- Think of this infinite being sitting in a room, staring at a wall just wishing that those who did perish could call out to him just once more. Now suppose this infinite being already paid the ultimate price by becoming the means by which we are eternally bound. Tethered to a life eternal.
- like a soldier jumping on a grenade,
- a mother protecting a child by her embrace in a tornado/earthquake.
- Giving everything, heaven and earth, gave it all up just to hear that perishing person say his name. Out of fear, out of love, out of foolishness, or even in anger. Just to hear their voice one more time.
I think if we can do that, we might actually love the lost the way Jesus loved us.
I hope I didn't upset anyone. I hope Jesus comes back soon. I hope you know that if you need someone to talk to, I will do the best I can. I love you.
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