LAJ Pt. 2.: "Being apathetic is a pathetic way to be.."

My paper on C.S. Lewis turned out wonderfully by the way. It was done about an hour after writing my last blog. You may be wondering why I haven't written since then, well, it is because I took to heart what I wrote and caught up on a mountain of schoolwork that I had left undone. It truly was fulfilling. But let's move on to the second part of our series on Laziness, Apathy, and Judging.

When Christianity was in its early stages, Satan attacked the church with persecution of the believers. However, that only strengthened Christian resolve instead of destroying it. As it failed he switched gears to perversion. Solid doctrine was replaced for money-grabbing scams. The church became more focused on power and money than on defending the faith. Again this ultimately failed in the 16th century and Christianity not only survived again but was made stronger. But he wasn't done yet. Through the 20th and 21st century he has returned with a new weapon: Passivity. Although Christian morals are being attacked more than ever Christians simply don't care or don't want to put the work into doing anything.

This is the problem with the Christian church today. We've been told to sit down and shut up and we have. Christians are now supporting such secular and sinful things as evolution and homosexuality. We've been told that these things are normal and "factual" and we've bought it. Instead of standing up for ourselves and the Bible we have either switched the Bible to line up with them or ignored the Bible altogether.

83% of Americans call themselves Christians. With all the sin and corruption in our culture, this is a sickening stat. Either these people are lying or are truly that apathetic.

When Jesus came upon the Temple and saw that it had been turned into a place of business, he was righteously angry and kicked the wrongdoers out. When something corrupts the word of God than we need to stand against it.

Perhaps the strongest call against apathy comes from Ephesians 6:10-18:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Our armor is for a fight and we need to be ready for battle against evil. We prepare by studying the Bible and delving deep into prayer. We need to fight by standing up against things that are opposed to God and the Bible.

Don't lose faith! This is a fight we can win as we have the strongest warrior ever on our side: Jesus.

LAJ Pt. 1: Being Lewis'd is not an excuse.

Perhaps I owe you all an explanation. My last post was on March 14th, and before that I'd posted a new blog every weekend. Why the change? Well I got “Lewis'd”. “Lies!” you say, “That was almost three weeks ago!” Indeed it was. And a 500 word paper has no business taking three weeks to write. My second blog post was over 500 words and I wrote that in two hours. So what gives? The simple answer: Laziness and procrastination.

Its actually the perfect segue for this post about laziness and the first part in my new series about Laziness, Apathy and Judging (LAJ, for short). Interestingly they're all tightly connected and provide important lessons for all of us.

Laziness is something we've all exhibited and is something we've become very apathetic about. I'm sure we've all heard a thing or two about being lazy and then have gone home only to repeat our error almost immediately. The problem with laziness is that its so pervasive, affecting very important and even the subtlest areas of our lives. One day someone may skip brushing their teeth and wind up with a cavity, another someone skips considering salvation and winds up in hell. It's also cumulative. One day we stop watering our garden and the plants die. We then leave the dead plants and weeds take their place. By now its become an eye sore that will take a lot of work to bring back to its former beauty. (2 Thess. 3:11 is another example of this)

The odd thing is that our laziness almost always brings out twice the work that it would have taken to do the original task. Its really a pointless practice, but we continue to do it because of an underlying aversion to work.

Proverbs 10:4 says, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” Chapter 13 concurs with “The sluggard craves and gets nothing but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied”.

Looking at those two verses we see a basic principle: If we don't work we gain nothing, if we do work we are bless with reward. As Christians the best example of laziness we can find is our personal walk with the Lord. It is built mainly though prayer and studying of the Bible. But are we in our Bible or praying as much as we should or could? I know that I am not.

We need to be able to eat spiritual “meat” as the writer of hebrews talks about in chapter 5 verses 11-14:

“We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

Luke 12 tells us that Jesus expects us to be alert and prepared when he returns. We should be diligently following His words and prepared for His return, and we cannot do that when we are lazily falling in and out of sin. Our apathy has blinded us from the importance of diligence.

And with that, I have a Lewis paper to write! Hehe..