We find it difficult to distinguish between spiritual combatants… and their hostages.
All believers in Christ, the Scripture teaches, will suffer-all of us. You will be glorified, Paul says, if you suffer with him. The problem with too many of us is not that we don't suffer, but that we assume that only Third World Christians or heroic missionaries are suffering. My boys didn't know that they were suffering in Russia; they would feel it as suffering now.
The culture around us knows what it means when they see a church in perpetual bluster and outrage. They know that we are scared.
If the apostles reminded even Paul himself to remember the poor (Galatians 2:10), then surely the rest of us need such a reminder.
The problem with carnal anger and outrage is that it's one of the easiest sons to commit while convincing oneself that he is being faithful.
A Christian understanding of the world sees a child's character not as genetically determined but as shaped to a significant degree by parental discipleship and discipline.
Maybe such questions bothered me so much because they are being asked about me, all the time, within the echo chamber of my own fallen psyche and by unseen rebel angels all around. Are you really a son of the living God? Does your God really know you? Does this biblical story really belong to you? Are these really your brothers and sisters? Do you really belong here?…
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