Wednesday, May 14, 2008

When will they hear us?

C. S. Lewis once said: "the world [won’t] hear us until we’ve publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We’ve shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Molech."
Lev 18:21
Lev 20:2
1Ki 11:5
2Ki 23:13
Now I know what you are thinking. “Detestable God, come on how bad can it be...”
Sacrifice to Molech, at least in some cases, involved human sacrifice. A relief was found in an area historically known for worship of Molech showing a priest holding a child. Also uncovered was a sanctuary comprising a cemetery with thousands of burned bodies of animals and of human infants, dating from the 8th century BC down to the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. Archaeologists have identified the site as a tophet (Tophet or Topheth (Hebrew - tōpheth) is believed to be a location in Jerusalem, in the Valley of Hinnom, where the Canaanites sacrificed children to the gods by burning them alive. After the practice of child sacrifice was outlawed by King Josia, the valley became a refuse site where animal carcasses, waste and trash were dumped, with fires permanently burning to keep disease at bay. Tophet became a synonym for Hell.) Most of the children's bodies appeared to be those of newborns, but some were older, up to about six years of age.
So Molech was a God who said “If you want me to love you, you will sacrifice the things you love (your children) to me.

Many terrible things have been done in the name of Christendom. And I believe Lewis exhortation that we need to repent and ask for forgiveness is spot on.
Don Miller was a student and campus ministry leader at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, a decidedly secular and highly intellectual place that Princeton Review named "the college where students are most likely to ignore God." In his book Blue Like Jazz, Miller tells of an unlikely event that introduced him to the mysteries of spiritual transformation.

"I said we should build a confession booth in the middle of campus and paint a sign on it that said "Confess your sins... We are going to confess to them. We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. We will apologize for the Crusades, we will apologize for televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely, we will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus. We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them."

What followed was a beautiful time of reconciliation, where the barriers to the good news were broken down. I'm sure the “Gates of hell” shook that day.

How can we apologize to the world with our lives?

P.S. For the full story of the Reed College Confessional read Donald Millers book Blue Like Jazz
P.P.S for a good excerpt read this.
http://www.injoy.com/Newsletters/catalyst/Full/default.aspx?article_id=1