Spamming the Lamb

You know what boils my blood? OK, I know you didn't ask but I'm going to tell you anyway. What irks me is that on my first ever little post, I got spam, and out of that spam, two comments were "Christian" spam. I am already a Christian, and do not need to be evangelized. If Jesus was here today, I think he'd chastize those who spam in his name just as much as he threw out the money changers from the temple. Isn't hawking religious T-Shirts pretty much the same as selling in the temple? It's just as odious. It's just as non-Christian. It's just as offensive. And if it offends me, and I'm a follower of Christ, how much more does it offend non-believers? -- the intended audience for these spam messages. I have said it before and I will say it again, these kind of "Christians" are the worst P.R. reps Jesus ever had. I think Jesus, the reputation of Christians, and Christianity as a whole would do a lot better without these sorts of people.

Postscript: I'll update this to say that these people are the ones I most need to forgive. Despite how I feel about what they do, I am still commanded to forgive. This is excruciatingly difficult for me. Unlike far too many so-called Christians, I have no problem with society's outcasts, freaks, weirdos, disenfranchised, broken and bereft people. My heart goes out to any sort of underdog, because that is my tribe. Hey, it was Jesus' tribe too, but too many people have conveniently chosen to forget that, erasing all the dirt smudges from their Bibles in favor of a clean-cut All-American sanitized man made religion built by white men's hands. I can't forgive George W. Bush. I can't forgive Jerry Fallwell, or Pat Robertson. I can forgive any sinner on a street corner though. The problem I've realized though, is that these pharisees are the biggest sinners of them all, and so, I am called all the more to forgive them. Bummer. I will be working on it. All I can say is, I'll try. I'll attempt to be willing to have God supply forgiveness in my heart for these people. The larger and louder part of me just wants to brand them as betrayers of the faith, and call them to repent. Then I remember that God is their judge. God and God alone. Justice is His. Justice will be done. My job is not to try to do God's job of judging. Besides which, I will be judged with the measure that I judge, so unless I want God to get out a magnifying glass and scrutinize my flaws, I have to lay off on doing so to others. Sometimes being a real Christian sucks. "God, do I really hafta forgive Dubya?" :::shudder::: "OK, OK, I'll think about it...I'll try..." *sigh*