What a message...

  I'm so sad about the events that have occurred over the past few days in Norway.  I've been thinking how afraid and confused those young people must have been as it was all happening.  It's the kind of scenario I've had nightmares about.

What makes this so much sadder, in my view, is that Christianity has been identified as a part of his life and now has a place in the discussion about his motives...  Nothing about what I know of Christ or His example of living, can reconcile to me how a person could kill innocent people in His name.  The truth is, this man didn't kill because he was a Christian.  He killed because he was an unstable, unbalanced mad-man.  There was something skewed in his view of the world and his ability or responsibility to change it.  It's frustrating to me how it seems like non-Christians are waiting like vultures to see a Christian act crazy and then they want to blame it on the Lord or a belief in Him.  It's how I would imagine those balanced, clear thinking Muslims feel every time a car bomb goes off or a terrorist attack occurs in the name of Islam.  Having deep convictions about right and wrong or about who God is doesn't have to mean intolerance for those who don't agree. 

Aristotle said "for desire is a wild beast, and passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are the best of men."  He believed that even the best of humans are capable of acting "hedonistically" rather than "rationally" when required to control their "appetities" or "passions".  When this happens, those people, in Aristotle's view, were "indistinguishable from animals".  We all have "appetites" and "reason" and "our character is revealed by which of the two dominate."  Obviously, reason was not the dominating factor in the mind of this killer.  He let his "appetite" or desire to force the world to see things as he did, overwhelm his reason.  That's not the message of Christianity... We were given free will in order to choose Christ.  Why would He give us that free will but then tell us to bully the rest of the world into obedience to Him?  That's not RATIONAL!

Our message as Christians is supposed to be about how much God loves us in spite of our flaws.  I wish that's what the world could see from us.  It makes me sad that so much of what they hear or see from us is a list of rules that they must follow in order to be worthy to join us.  YUCK!  That's not the way it's supposed to be.  We're supposed to display the love of the Lord and that's what is supposed to draw men to repentance and toward better living.  It's not up to us to enforce right and wrong.  *big sad sigh*...