The question I have is whom should I serve and who will I inevitably annoy? I was sitting with a statisticain discussing (of all things pathway analysis) and said that we had to take a meta analysis back to scratch and write it using covidence, functionally redoing three years work, and he said “whose milk did you piss in“.
I replied that what we were doing would do that.
What happened in this project is that the people who set it up were my mentors, and they were very, very bright. I got involved a decade ago, when most people were like me. Now it has expanded, and the people now runnign the programme ane nice, but believe in the methodology. Too much.
They have lost doubt.
How does this fit with today’s gospel? For we are told, commanded to confess Christ crucified. For the sake of our souls. The answer is that many did not merely doubt, they believed their ideology too much. They did not believe Christ. And then there were the Churchians of that age.
While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”
When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and turn,
and I would heal them.”Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.
(John 12:36-43 ESV)
Why do people remain quiet? Why are we not open about our faith? The Muslims don’t care. They are effective and intimidation: holding their daily prayers in the street to stop traffic, sending gangs to beat up any gays or girls (and the fathers and lovers who defend them). For they know they are protected. If we held a drum-head communion in the city centre we would have the fire hoses turned on us. If we preach the conversion and repentance of know sins the rainbow coalition calls us haters, but the Islamic mullahs preach their death and get a pass.
Too many of us are Churchians. We consider that the nation was Christian, and think of the Church as for society. It must reflect the moral issues that the community has: global warming and inequality not righteousness, truth and justice. It must please man, and not God.
But that is the form of religion without the power.
Then we find ourselves regulated, enslaved. By Human Resources policy, equity laws. We cannot say this or do that. We are too afraid, because we think that we are Nice and Good and True, to black knight these processes and keep HR in the court. The SJW and Muslims have no such qualms, for they are allied against Christ.
Se need to stop being nice and start being a Church. Se need to stop talking about sin as trivia, and again as an offence against the very God who became man and died so that we could have a relationship with him.
We need to make those in sin know that the word exists.
And then, only then, will we again be a church. We will fear God. And man will note us, and wonder.
“The question I have is whom should I serve and who will I inevitably annoy?”
this is powerful … b/c it is a choice.