This was posted in a blog by Leonard Pitts, Jr.
In faith, a baker refuses to bake a cake for a gay couple's wedding. In faith, a minister prays for the president to die. In faith, terrorists plant bombs at the finish line of a marathon. In faith, mosques are vandalized, shot at and burned. In faith, a televangelist asks his followers to buy him a $65-million private jet.
And no one is even surprised anymore.
In America, what we call faith is often loud, often exclusionary, sometimes violent and too frequently enamored of shiny, expensive things. In faith, ill-tempered people mob the shopping malls every year at Christmas to have fistfights and gunfights over hot toys and high-end electronics.
You did not hear much about faith last week when Jimmy Carter held a press conference to reveal that he has four spots of cancer on his brain.
The moral of the story is that the best moments of our faith are not combative, not hateful, and not necessarily noisy, but instead are lived out day by day in the quiet hearts of good people who just keep plugging away at loving God and loving others.
It's a beautiful day in God's world, be sure to see the good.
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Sorry, but I have to play a bit of the devils advocate on this. Pitts has made an excellent point. However, the last paragraph at the end does not depict the real moral of the story for me. It just points out the other "side" of living noisly.
Until we start talking about what's driving all the angst, anger, resentment, increasingly violent, disrespectful behavior in our country and other countries, we will fail to even measurably turn some of this the other direction. The frequency and intensity of anger and violent attacks makes me sad. It also makes me somewhat scared. Without law enforcement we would see anarchy and a police state at the national level. I'm rather frightened for family members or friends who are law enforcement officials.
It's true that we are at Christ's best when we live our lives with quiet hearts. But we cannot put our heads in the sand and fail to somehow address what's causing all this. In America, for starters, I say it's the demise of the home.
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