The Only Class That Matters

You said it all Daniel! i salute you for this new definition and find it more than appropriate, especially in these days of age where too much personal gain is at the forefront instead of helping the other man.

Daniel – i respect your opinion & intellect on a number of matters. However, while you dis Christians … they are the folks on the front lines of this very issue. I have yet to meet an athiest starting orphanages in SE Asia, treking in mine infested areas to get to refugees, or establishing clinics in S America or Africa. I know way too many people in the hard places that get no credit, no rewards, and no money to do what they do. I have a doctor friend who has been virtually bed-ridden for 3 years due to a parasitic/co-infections that he can not eradicate because he put his life on the line to minister to IDPs in a hellhole created by a military dictatorship. He could have been in the UK making big $$$, but instead he & his family live a subsitance lifestyle. Why do these folks do what they do? Bleeding heart liberals??? Very few have enough philanthropic/humanitarian unction to suffer and die for people who may never thank them. Since you quote (misquote) Jesus fairly liberally, let me give you a couple:-For God so Loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever should believe on Him will have everlasting life.-For whom much is given, much is expected-It is more blessed to give than recieve-Take up your cross and follow me-et. al. The people I know (or knew) are not in it to cram religion down anyones throat. Some left their loved ones in places whose names we can’t even pronounce. Some could have had fortunes or lost them to do what they do. Many Christians all over the world suffer daily for their faith in Christ. They do it becuase they have known a love, a love from God through His Son Jesus Christ, that requires them to follow Him no matter where it leads. To the guy with the bumper sticker: – So many Christians, so few lionsyou will be edified to know that more Christians have died from persecution in the last 50 years than the previous 1850 years, including those who died in the arenas of Rome. In all due respect, and I wish we could sit at dinner sometime to talk, no one hangs it on the line like this for a religion. Jesus Christ did not establish a religion … though some honestly have made it that. He came to establish relationship … broken because of our own rebellion … a life boat back into covenant with God. We all have a sence of justice … and that sense of justice would be offended seriously if someone like a Hitler were able to escape punishment in the temporal or eternal. Yet it is our own sence of morality that causes us to graduate levels of offensiveness … this should be punished, but let that slide – no big deal. Question is … how little dog manure can you add to a browney before you would say it was safe to eat – the answer is that we want it to be pure – no polution no matter how small. Real justice is like that – no grey areas. It is right or wrong. Thing is … by that standard of purity, we are ALL wrong. If you want to talk about the severity of God … then talk about the Cross. If you want to talk about the Justice of God … then talk about the Cross. But when you say God is too severe and portray such with a fragment of a verse or quote, then you have indeed only the pine needle and have ignored the forrest. Purity is the only acceptable thing that can come into the presence of God … and that purity is lost to all of us. Only when a substitute … Jesus Christ … enters the picture can we be propositionally clean. That is the thing that my many acquantenances have known all along … and that is why they do what they do. Not to get some religious browney points … but as acts of gratitude for what God has done for them … and acts of obedience for how God wants to use them to minister to others. We are just beggars who have found bread … seeking to share it with other beggars who are hungry. God bless you that you may know the unsurpassed greatness of the love of Jesus Christ for you … no matter what you believe. j