Why Don't More People Believe in Jesus?

This is a hotbed issue for me. We live in an age where many people openly question (or outright deny) the existence of God and/or the existence of Jesus. Oddly enough, pastors in the pulpits have been scratching their heads for years trying to figure out why.

For some inexplicable reason, some folks seem to be figuring that there aren't enough latte bars in the churches. So they build coffeeshops. Or maybe professional multimedia presentations. So they invest in a production crew, using money raised from tithes (which were intended as a "storehouse" for the poor and needy) to pay the crew and to produce fancy films explaining away the plan of salvation.

It's nothing new; in fact if I say that the moneychangers are taking over the temple, I will get nods of agreement even in these same circles.

I am reminded on a regular basis, though, that people are ALWAYS drawn to sincere, heartfelt expressions of Christian faith. Recently, when driving in to get some supplies from a local store, I passed a woman outside with a sign that simply said "Out of Gas". Now, having tried to do things for the poor and the homeless for many years, I am ALWAYS skeptical when I see people in that situation. I'm no fool, and I've seen every con job there is. And so I thought long and hard about whether I should stop and help. She was not in a place where I could stop and learn her story, and besides, even getting someone's story is not the best tell. The people who are experts at gaming the system have the best stories, and the people who truly need help are often so embarrased at having to ask that their apprehension could very easily be mistaken for dishonesty.

So (not to my credit, but to God's), I decided to help her without knowing more of the backstory. It's God's money anyways, and I figure if someone "takes advantage" of what I give them, it was never my money in the first place, and thus it is not my place to be offended. I did, for a moment, wonder if it was the wisest thing.

I didn't have to wait long for an answer. Her tears and gratitude gave me all of the answer I needed.

We live in a world where it's easy to be callous. We've been gamed so many times, we've had people take advantage of our good nature (and, to my own discredit, I have at times sadly taken advantage of others' good natures), that we've become cynics. We want to help, but we want to know that we're helping and not enabling. In other words (and this stings as much to type as it likely does to read), we often attach strings to our "generosity".

The truth is, if we attach strings, it's not generosity, it's a transaction.

The reason more people don't believe in Jesus is because they don't SEE Jesus. We TALK about trusting God, but we make sure to pay up our insurance premiums. We use pithy platitudes like "God will provide", yet we keep our pantries full even when the local food bank is asking us what we can give. We hold back our blessings because we believe WE provided the blessings, not God. We have a form of Godliness, but deny its power, something we are warned against in 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

I believe that if more people SAW Jesus in a church willing to serve, they would believe, and they would follow.

Now, when I presented the story I came across the other day, I deliberately left off "the rest of the story" because, the truth is, this article was written more about the conviction in my own heart than it is the conviction I see in other people's lives. Here is the rest of the story:

I had spent the weekend in Dallas to represent Hobo's List and participate in the Occupy Dallas march. On the way down, I passed two guys walking on the side of the road. But I was on a schedule and stopping seemed rather inconvenient. On the way back, I passed at least one, but I was seriously wanting to get home. My rationalizations for passing them are irrelevant; the fact is that I did. The way back was also compounded with concerns about how much money was left for the remainder of the month. I had taken down a decent load of ewaste for recycling, but not enough to profit off of my trip. And, as always during this time of year, there was the impending fear of the approaching holidays.

But shortly before I pulled in to the store, I had called home to check in. My oldest daughter mentioned a rather generous holiday gift from some friends, one that certainly didn't take away the normal concerns about money, but did make some of those questions a little easier to answer.

In other words, I must reluctantly confess that I did not give out of my need, as with the widow's mite, but out of my excess.

If we want to change the way the church is perceived, perhaps the best way to do so is to change the way WE behave. If people see Christians as self absorbed materialists who talk a good game but have difficulty living it, that will affect how they respond. But if they see us as willing to give EVERYTHING to ensure the comforts of those who are less privileged than ourselves, then maybe, just maybe, they will see a church worth joining.

The War on Christmas

As the Christmas season draws nearer, we will soon see the endless parade of pundits who will declare the "war on Christmas". And they'll be compelling. They'll show you department store Santas out of a job, they'll show you clerks who are told to use generic holiday greetings...anything they can to convince you that Christmas has been crushed under the grinding wheels of political correctness.

The truth is, they are partly right and partly wrong. There IS a war on Christmas. But it's not being waged by the people we think.

Let me take you back to Christmas 1981. I was an 11 year old boy, and I knew we wouldn't have much for Christmas. We had moved over 1000 miles to our new home in our old station wagon, and were starting over: me, my sister, and three brothers, one of them four months old at the time. Our main concern was getting through the winter with what we had on hand.

We were new to the area, so we didn't know anybody, really. New school, new community, and we lived on such limited means that I doubt most folks in today's America could survive. We went to bed on Christmas Eve with a scattering of homemade presents underneath the remarkably dated aluminum foil Christmas tree that my mother had goten at a discount from working at a department store.

About midnight, we were awakened by a knock on the door. My mother opened it, and a guy in a cheap Santa suit came in with what seemed to us like a million presents, as well as food for the next day. One of those presents I still remember vividly: an Atari 2600, the "dream gift" for us. The Christmas we wouldn't have was saved by people from the church who didn't care that they didn't know us that well, al they cared was that we have a good Christmas.

One of my favorite Christmas songs is the Longfellow poem "Christmas Bells". I've always identified with the next to last verse:

And in despair I bowed my head/"There is no peace on earth", I said/"For hate is strong and mocks the song/Of Peace on Earth goodwill to men".

As Christians, we have a distinct duty to serve God by serving our fellow-man. Every time we put our own greeds above the needs of others in our community, we wage a war on Christmas. Every time we rationalize away our responsibility to the poor, we are waging a war on Christmas. Every night a child goes to bed hungry in this, the richest country in the world, we are waging a war on Christmas.

A "war on Christmas" can't be won by displacing the department store Santas. Christmas was never about Santa, or fancy gifts or conspicuous consumption. While Christmas means many things to many different cultures, in the Christian tradition, at least, it is about the Advent, the coming of Jesus Christ, a man who taught us to see others as higher than ourselves, and to serve "the least of these". When we as a society turn our backs on the poor and serve ourselves, we are waging the cruelest, bloodiest war on Christmas that can be waged. And the casualties can be seen underneath the freeway overpasses, in the back alleys, on the park benches, and in the slums and hovels of our inner cities. If you're looking for Jesus in the toy aisle at Target, you are definitely, most definitely looking in the wrong place.

If this Christmas, Christians would look to fulfill the instructions of Christ and to live in service to their fellow man not only on December 25 but also throughout the year, the war on Christmas will have been won. And suddenly we won't be so concerned about the presence or absence of the department store Santa. .