Back in the early 70's there was a phenomenom that occurred called "The Jesus Movement." Perhaps some of you out there might recall it. It was made up in large part by young people, many of whom you would call hippies. It had the noble plan of restoring first century Christianity. While it is not my intention to go into alot of detail about this movement, I will say that although it eventually died off, quite a bit of good came out of it. Not the least of which was that thousands of people came to a knowledge of the saving Grace of Jesus. I'd be remiss not to add that an incredible amount of great Christian music came from this era. Music of a passion and quality we have not heard since.
The 70's was the first time I ever heard of Jesus being referred to as a hippie.
The reason given for this description was that Jesus was said to be all about love, peace and harmony. Fast forward 30 years or so and we see that the 'Jesus as a hippie' portrayal is still with us and shows no signs of going away.However, what has been more prominent in recent years than the peace, love and harmony Jesus is the portrayal of the non-judgemental Jesus.
Promulgated primarily by the "spiritual but not religious" crowd,and, pretty much every Christian Church and denomination that has watered down what the Bible says, this portrayal is a sad distortion of reality. It only takes reading the words of Jesus found in the Gospels of Matthew,Mark, Luke and John to see how wrong this is.
In part two of this post I will look into Jesus' own words in regards to the areas of being "non-judgmental", accepting of everything if it is "done in love", as well as protecting your own well being (what would Gandhi have thought?).
No comments:
Post a Comment