The Divine Crash

We have all seen these emails.  We have gotten them from well-meaning friends and relatives who don’t know any better.  They usually start with some cliché picture of Jesus like this one:

Jesus on the cross

Then the email usually follows with something to the effect of “I love Jesus and if you love Jesus you will send this to ONE MILLION PEOPLE in the next sixty seconds.” and then the email tells you that if you don’t send it to the random number of people then you have denied Jesus and Jesus will deny you before God and then usually they quote some obscure Bible verse or random quote from some random person who may or may not have existed.

As a pastor I get so many of these emails and, quite frankly, I delete every one.  However, the other day these emails got me in trouble.

A very nice, older, gentleman that I was friends with was sending me these emails and I informed him that by simply sending these emails does not make him, or anyone else, a better follower of Christ.  He agreed and I told him that I do not send them out to which he told me: “You are ashamed of Christ and He will deny you entrance on judgement day!”

REALLY OVER EMAILS!?!

After picking my jaw up off the floor I replied very calmly with a quote from Peter Rollins.

“I deny Jesus and the resurrection every time I see oppression and injustice and I do nothing.”

To that the man walked away from me and while he has been pleasant to me since then I have not gotten another email from him.

The cross, Jesus, the Resurrection, and the ascension have never been about emails or clogging up someone’s inbox and being obnoxious.  It has always been about seeing the lack of humanity and injustice in the world and doing something about it.

We can claim to be a follower of Jesus, but unless we are willing to follow Christ to the point of actually doing something to change the world then have we actually done something?  There is a TV commercial in my area that says “To do good you actually have to do something good.”  Doing good is more than clicking “forward,” it is actually moving forward.

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Random Thoughts by RevBT