My First Blog Post

This is my first blog post, on my first blog. I figured I'd start one; that way my friends can read what I think on various subjects. I've decided it's a pretty good means of communication. I'm not sure what I should write about on my first post. Let's see...... I suppose I will write about the Christian transformation that happens to people when they follow Christ. I may be wrong about some of the stuff I write, so if I am just disregard whatever erroneous stuff I might say. In fact I might change my mind later, but here's some ideas that are going through my head at the moment.

Deciding that one shall follow Christ is a very scary thing. It is a very scary thing, because it brings you into a place unknown to you before. In fact, many people never follow Christ due to fear. Now, since fear is acting as an obstacle to the conversion of souls, we definitely ought to pray for those souls. At the opposite end of the spectrum is another situation we ought to pray about. From what I can tell, many prospective Christians are never told about the fearful aspects of becoming a Christian. I think perhaps many Christians decide to follow Him without fully realising what they're getting themselves into. Well, if that happens and they're ok with the transformation when they realize what's taking place, all is well. However, if they find the transformation too difficult and fall away from the faith they promised to live by, then more harm has been done than good. It's sort of like a contract in the business world. If someone is going to sign a contract, it's better for them to not sign it at all than to sign it without first reading it and weighing the cost. Breaking contracts is not a good thing; breaking an eternal contract is even worse.

It may sound at this point like I'm equating acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a simple contract. I'm not. I'm using the analogy to make a point. The point is this: Before you start following Christ, find out what you're getting yourself into, because the last thing we need in the world today is more people masquerading as Christians who are simply not up to the challenge. Here's how I see it. The more luke-warm Christians we have, the more it becomes a social norm to be a Christian. Now it's perfectly ok for being a Christian to be a social norm, that's actually a good thing, since it means there's more Christians around encouraging each other and glorifying God. The problem is that if the amount of luke-warm Christians outnumbers the amount of fanatical Christians, and by "fanatical" I mean "orthodox," then the luke-warm Christian becomes acceptable. People assume Christians are called to be luke-warm, rather than holy. Becoming a Christian when presented with this luke-warm Christianity is not very scary, leading to more of the same problem, growing grossly out of control.

Perhaps I'm being a bit hyperbolic at this point, but not by much. I'm sure the current situation will solve itself over time, but it's gonna be very messy. I don't think we have to wait for it to resolve itself though. We could try to stop it ourselves. I mean, if we are the Church, it shouldn't be too hard. All we have to do is start acting like Christians, those of us who know how. I'll propose two ways to find out how. One is to use the scriptures and other Christian writings to one's advantage. Another is to look at other Christians that do it and learn from them. I'm certain there are other ways, but those are the easiest ways I see.

Obviously I feel that this issue is very important, and perhaps I haven't explained exactly why. I've made it clear that we need Christians to be sort of fanatical, like Christ and the apostles. I believe that until we are truly those fanatical bunch of people willing to do whatever it takes to glorify Christ, as a Church, we're not going to be able to get the sort of stuff done that we need to. As to that stuff the Church needs to get done, I'm sure I'll blog about it in the future. Anyway, God bless everyone who reads this. Perhaps it might spark some interesting discussions we can have some time.