I received an e mail from a church member this week and i just watched it today and i have to say i was pretty astounded at what i saw. before you watch it i would like to say i am not a fan of the way the movie is framed. It makes Christians out to be very condemning. Just please pay attention to the content that oprah has. It is startling.
If you have watched this you may feel the same way i did. My first reaction was, “How can people actually believe this?” Here is the answer, they see someone living out their beliefs (ironically the word we should not have in our religion according to Oprah) with a passion and doing something about it.
Kris has been preaching about Christ and Culture and i have been thinking about Christians in our culture. How do people look at us? Well lets consider how most people will respond to this new Oprah craze. There will inevitably be a boycott of all things Oprah from the Christians and some prominent speaker will most likely be on the news and say something outrageous on behalf of all other Christians that will make us out to be cruel. What if instead of doing something that wont change a thing (boycotting) we started living out our beliefs with such a passion that even Oprah would see that Christians do not live on feelings and emotions and that we are not life but rather Gods love living in us? Things would start to change.
I have said many times that worship is not a feeling. It’s not! It is an action from the heart. Oprah said in her video, we are not living life, we are life and that we should not believe we should just feel. I dont know about you but when i read the scriptures it says, “he who BELIEVES in me will not perish, but have eternal life”. When i see that scripture it does not say he who feels God is present will not perish, but will have the idea of life. But we also must remember that we are to love our enemies and to be in the world but not of it. So i want to challenge all who read this not to take a stance in a non loving way but rather to do as Jesus would do. Oprah did have on thing right in what she said…God is love…therefore, we ought to be love as well. Thanks for reading my rant and feel free to make your own comments.
*Discalaimer: These thoughts and ideas do not reflect FBC as a whole. These thoughts came solely from Jon Gerten
Thanks, Jon, for posting this and giving your insight. I find it interesting that this should come about at the same time of the two messages on Christ and Culture we’ve just heard. It would be very easy to shake my head and wonder how Oprah and her disciples could believe such stuff and go about my way. But as we know, society is seeking, searching for something, Someone to rely on. They just don’t know Who they are seeking….yet. I agree that we need to live out our beliefs even more strongly now and not recoil from culture…become Love in flesh to the culture that’s ready for anyone, anything to make them ‘feel good’……..extend ourselves beyond our church walls and do what we were put here to do in the time God has given us to do it. We have the Hope, we have the Key, and it’s not in ourselves. I don’t think this Oprah video and Kris’s messages were coincidence, do you??? (Especially because I don’t believe in coincidence.) So now the question and the real test is, what will you, what will I do with what we know?