Thoughts Along The Journey

I subscribe to qideas.org and receive regular notes about articles or talks posted to their website. One the other day caught my attention: “The Gospel as a Virus”.  I, like you, have often heard it said that many have been “vaccinated against the Gospel, against the real thing”.  It’s a way we use to describe the difficulty of the cultural context in which we work in some places in the world.

However, I had not really thought about making the application to me or us as a Christian community.  Richard makes a number of powerful statements in this talk, but one that kind of stuck with me was the fact that the Gospel is: “a call to show the world a different way to live as forgiven people; reconciled to God and reconciled to one another.”

The Gospel is first of all about teaching me how to live a different life.  The Gospel focuses on having me experience forgiveness and reconciliation in my relationship with God and with others.  How can I share this message, this virus, with others if it has not first “infected” my life?

There’s the interesting piece.  Living out of the Gospel, “preaching the Gospel” to myself on a daily basis is first of all not a series of tasks or steps.  It’s about living.  It’s about praying [and asking others for help] to see God work the Gospel deeper into my life through the experiences and conversations I have throughout the day.

Many times, the faith I show to others communicates the message that Christianity straightens out the mess of one’s life and gives one a system to better live by.  I probably need to spend more time on experiencing the Gospel “virus” in my own life, so that what I share with others will be “life to life”

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