Good people, too

I think we limit the kind of Christianity we try to promote sometimes, and in doing so, we limit our view of God. The brand of Christianity we try to live sometimes is one that exists for its own sake. We try to spread the influence of Christianity, convert droves of unknowing heathens, and try to make them into what we think good Christians should be. All the while, the world doesn’t benefit much from our goodness. They mostly see that we like to succeed in our own arena and to impress each other with our spirituality. The world is not impressed much with our spirituality, though, because our spirituality is not the kind that benefits the world much.

The Bible talks a lot about helping the poor. There is this spot in Galatians where I was reading the other day that talks about how, other than spreading the gospel to the Gentiles, the apostles asked Paul to “continue to remember the poor.” It’s in Galatians 2:10 if you want to look it up. It seems kind of out of place the first time you read it. It seems like the apostles would have asked Paul to continue being faithful to the church or to continue praying for their ministry, but their request was just for him to help poor people.

I think often we get so caught up becoming good Christians, we forget that God created us to and desires that we become good human beings. We are part of this world and it seems that if we are going to try to minister to it, evangelize it, and change it, then we should start paying attention to its needs, instead of seeing anyone who doesn’t share our viewpoint as an enemy.