politics.

I hate politics. In grade school it was a popularity contest. In the "big boy" world it's about making the other guy (or other woman) look like a sissy, a screw-up, a scum bag, and the spawn of Satan. and that's just church politics. kidding.
Church politics have become just as bad as the real-world, if not worse.

Earlier in the week I talked to a graduate of the seminary I now attend. I told him that I was becoming disenfranchised by the politics and rhetoric of people here at the seminary. The school was built as a reactionary institution after Baptists got political in the 1980's. But you would think after this period of time, the school could adopt it's own identity, it's own image. There are still too many people who can only bash the "opposition," and we think it's always the other guy who's causing all the trouble. How come people always look at the speck when they've got a whole tree sticking out of their eye?

Driving home tonight I was listening to Rob Bell's sermon from 9/10/2006:

"Jesus wants to save Christians from being the moral police of the world. We have to understand that when Christians start charging around the world, saying to people who never claimed to follow God, "You're out of line," it's not something Jesus did. Jesus goes to the people who claim to know God and confronts them with their lack of obedience, their hard-heartedness, their indifference, and says "Return and be, because the message is about flesh and blood people, stepping into their God-given destiny."

It's an easy trap to fall into, criticizing other people. It takes effort to step up and declare WHO YOU ARE. God is "I Am Who I Am." Why can't we say "We Are Who We Are." Instead we say "We Are Who You Aren't." It implies that a hierarchy exists. There is no hierarchy, we are all God's people.

Let us go this week, out into the world, declaring who we are and what we stand for. We stand for justice. We stand for human rights. We're in a world with too much fighting already, we don't need to make that problem worse.