Wednesday, February 18, 2009
No More Mr. Nice Guy
A long, long time ago...in a galaxy far, far away...I was an Alice Cooper fan. School's Out. No More Mr. Nice Guy. OK, he was a little strange...but it was all part of an act. Rumor has it he might even be a follower of Christ these days...I don't know. But I loved his music...still have it on my iPhone. I even think "No More Mr. Nice Guy" might have a message for those who follow Messiah...well, at least the title has a message for me. I'm not even sure what the lyrics of the song are anymore. I was meeting with a friend yesterday and he reminded me about a passage in Acts 19. Paul comes to Ephesus and causes quite a stir. People are healed (even sounds scarily like some tv evangelist stunts! Why are some of those things recorded in the Bible??!!). Demons jumping on fakes and beating them to a bloody pulp. Witches and Warlocks turning their backs on their magic and burning their potion books that were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or more! Then some workers of silver, vital to the idol worshiping industry in Ephesus, began to fear that if Paul led any more people to follow Jesus, their livlihood might be threatened. In Acts 19:27, Demetrius told the other idol manufacturers, "there is DANGER not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing and that she may eve be deposed from her magnificance." Ok, cool, but what does all this have to do with Alice Cooper?? Well, here's a clue...I can't stand it when I hear people refer to someone as a "nice Christian man" or a "nice Christian lady." Those are words that make me want to flee to the hills. Most of the time it means someone who is a right-wing Republican and thinks America is the new Israel and who doesn't smoke, drink, chew or go out with people who do and who thinks a "good" Christian is someone who wags an angry finger at all those sinners out there in the world! Guess what? Paul doesn't want "nice Christians!" Paul was a DANGEROUS follower of Christ. Paul afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted. Jesus was DANGEROUS...still is! Why is it that in Jesus' day, sinners were comfortable around Him and religious people were not? And why is it today that sinners are uncomfortable around the church and religious people are VERY comfortable? In my humble opinion, we are WAY TOO NICE! How can you and I be DANGEROUS today? Who knows, maybe I've been a little dangeous writing this blog!! Maybe some good has come out of being an Alice Cooper fan after all...
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5 comments:
Okay, I just lost all respect for you. I, too, am an old school rock fan, but Alice Cooper?!? The only positive thing I can say is, at least its not disco. If it were, we would have a serious problem.
Seriously, good post.
Awesome post, Bob! I was the poster-child for the plain-vanilla, Christian nice-guy who thought living righteously was living with a "peace at all costs" mentality. How wrong I was!
Way to go dude! Um does this mean you want to go out for a beer sometime? ;)
this is the kind of teaching from flayhart that changed my life about 12 years ago
"why is it today that sinners are uncomfortable around the church and religious people are VERY comfortable?
because being broken before others is difficult and even harder if there are self-righteous "religious" people to see your sin. Dangerous is being real with each other and letting someone else see my "crap". That is really scary but it works. I recently shared my "crap" with a guy at church that I really hardly even know and the response was that he broke out in tears and shared that he to has similar "crap" to mine. I was so encouraged I can't even tell you how good it felt to know that I wasn't alone.
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