Have you ever wondered what Jesus was like as a person? I have. And I have wondered: would I have like Jesus? The truth is I am not so sure. There are many passages that tell us that 'being nice' was not high on the Lord's priorities.
As it turns out, 'being nice' should not be on our priority list either. Instead, we should be proclaiming the faith and confronting evil. August Meyrat has an excellent article on this very topic at The Federalist today entitled How Making Christianity A 'Nice People Club' Is Destroying The Church
So what do these two news items have in common besides having to do with the Catholic Church? They are both a result of the same phenomenon that has plagued the church and nearly every other political and cultural institution in the developed world: deadly indifference.
I take this term from the new book from Catholic writer and editor Eric Sammons who explains how the church went from being a large, influential community of practicing Christians to a hollowed-out cultural relic run by out-of-touch Boomers. In short, he argues that church leaders in the 1960s took radical measures to “open up” to different viewpoints and practices. In effect, they became “indifferent” to frequently incompatible systems of thought.Every faithful Christian should confront ideas that are fundamentally at issue with God's will. Abortion is one such issue. Divorce is another. And yes, we the faithful have committed sins. But through our repentance, and the Grace of God, we are free to now confront these evils. But we can not do these things if we are being 'nice.'
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