My Viewpoint

I wrote yesterday in response to an email sent to me asking me to speak to the godless condition of state schools which in turn leads people to kill others. The questioner also talked of leaving God out of the public forum and the evil that this causes. Although not quite word-for-word, I used his first email to construct these first sentences to be certain I gave his thoughts correctly.
The prompting for this came, I’m sure, from the Virginia Tech incident of a few days ago. I received a less-than-flattering response from the one who penned the original request. So much so that I have concern that this person may not be the Christian example that I thought at one time that he was.
I’m sure he was looking for someone to agree with him and others who believe, whether he understands that he believes this way or not, that government should cater to conservative Christians who wish to make their voices heard through the use of public funds and venues supported and financed by government. Somehow, in their minds, the shooting in Virginia is directly related to the lack of government approval of and promotion of the conservative Christian viewpoint. According to the natural and logical extension of his words that I outlined at the beginning of this piece, if we would only have God back in our schools, this wouldn’t have happened (nor would Columbine, etc.).
This view doesn’t fly with me for a number of reasons. I could speak of the foundational principles of our society, which prohibit such. I could speak of the fundamental unfairness of forcing others to support, through tax dollars, someone’s religious viewpoint.
However, it seems to me that one only need look at the example of the New Testament and the spread of Christianity in the first century to see that government was NOT the primary instrument of the spreading of the church. Rather, the church grew because Christians taught others, who in turn taught others. And they did so primarily, it seems, in homes, in places of worship, and in public areas such as what we would today refer to as parks and recreation areas.
They urged and encouraged others to follow their example as they lived their lives as best they could in conformance with the mind and will of God. They fed the hungry. They clothed the destitute. They healed the sick. They obeyed the laws of the land. They served the widows and orphans. They had a profound respect for women and children, the weak and the old (compared to the society in which they were living). They gave a cup of cold water to anyone who asked. And all along, they were telling people, I suppose many times one-on-one, the reason why they were behaving so refreshingly differently from others in their society.
Evil things will always happen in the world. Evil people will always kill, maim, and torture others. The spread of Christianity in the first century by the very Apostles of Jesus Christ didn’t keep Domitian and others from doing their despicable deeds. Our job as Christians is not to create a religious government. If that was so, Jesus would have set up a government himself and spread His church through that means. No, our job is to know the mind of God and do the will of the Father who sent Jesus to this world.