Church Voices

12 Responses to “Questioned by Ariah”

1. Tim Says:
   April 26th, 2006 at 6:02 pm

   Well, I do like to keep my three (oh wait, you make 4) readers happy in whatever way I can.

   By spreading the gospel I mean the news that Christ came to earth as God in the flesh and took the punishment for our sins on the cross and was resurrected on the third day.

2. Tim Reed Says:
   May 3rd, 2006 at 12:05 pm

   Christ didn’t come to spread the gospel. He came to do the gospel. Then he commissioned the apostles and the church to do the spreading.

3. Tim Reed Says:
   May 4th, 2006 at 11:15 am

   How can we do the gospel since doing the gospel means living a morally perfect life, taking the sins of everyone on us and then rising from the dead?

4. Tim Reed Says:
   May 11th, 2006 at 6:56 pm

   That’d be a false dichotomy.

5. ariah fine Says:
   May 15th, 2006 at 4:40 pm

   excuse my ignorance, but can you explain what you mean by a “false dichotomy”?

6. Joni Says:
   May 20th, 2006 at 7:42 am

   We are called to be Christlike. We are called to not only spread the gospel, but do the gospel. We should be doing our best to live a morally perfect life, point people to the one on whom to lay their sins, and if necessary suffer with christ in his crucifixion. It seems hypocritical to me to “spread” the gospel without actually loving people in action no matter what the cost.

7. Tim Reed Says:
   May 20th, 2006 at 10:26 am

   Joni,

   Who here has advocated “spread[ing] the gospel without actually loving people”. Honestly, you seem to equivocate activist demand-style politics as the only possible way of showing love whereas there is absolutely no place in scripture where Christians are commanded (or even allowed to) demand that the government enforce Biblical modes of living on the general populace.

8. Tim Reed Says:
   May 20th, 2006 at 12:48 pm

   Ariah,

   From my first post which started this whole conversation and which I referenced in the post itself. Here’s the quote that started all this:

   Churches involved in social justice are involved in inflicting their will on the general populace. Meanwhile the life and message of Jesus is one of servanthood. If you want to spend your life telling people what to do then don’t become a Christian, because being a follower of Christ means being a servant.

   Does this mean that Christians shouldn’t be involved in politics? No, but it means the church shouldn’t be. Politics should take the same place in a Christian’s life that things like sports, or video games would. If your typical worship gathering involves a political stump speech I would suggest to you that you’re not gathering to worship.

9. Joni Says:
   May 21st, 2006 at 1:08 am

   I am not talking about the government doing anything, I am talking about the church actually being a servant in the sense of helping the poor, speaking out against domestic violence, being a shelter for those in poverty - these are social justice issues that the church should be involved in because Christ was involved in them. I am not in any way talking about the church being involved in “politics”, but being involved in meeting the needs of people. How will they know we love them if we are unwilling to help meet their needs because we are too afraid of politics or the social justice issues of our time? And I highly disagree that issues of politics that affect the livelyhood of God’s people should take such a small role in our lives as to be equated to the realm of video games and sports. When government policies cost people jobs, livelyhood, and the ability to care for their children we ought to care about that much more than we do about playing mariokart.

10. Tim Reed Says:
    May 21st, 2006 at 5:41 pm

    And I highly disagree that issues of politics that affect the livelyhood of God’s people should take such a small role in our lives as to be equated to the realm of video games and sports. When government policies cost people jobs, livelyhood, and the ability to care for their children we ought to care about that much more than we do about playing mariokart

    That’s lovely, but what you think doesn’t play into the role of the church. Is there anything in scripture that indicates the church should be involved in this action? I don’t see it anywhere at all.

11. Ariah Fine Says:
    May 24th, 2006 at 11:38 pm

    more to come Tim, but I think you should at least acknowledge the first half of what Joni said.

12. Ariah Fine Says:
    February 25th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    what ever happened to this conversation?

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