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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Counting
Gods Back in
the 1960’s pop culture proclaimed that “God was dead”.
Well, somewhere along the way, He must have been resurrected,
because it seems like everyone is talking about Him these days,
including pop culture. Performers
thank God as they receive their Grammies for sexually explicit and
violent music videos. CNN
sponsored a political debate concerning God and the candidate where all
of the presidential hopefuls
claimed great faith in God. In
the last 2 weeks CNN has broadcasted documentaries entitled “God’s
Warriors” and “The Anil of God”.
Our western society is undergoing a debate on how God fits into
education, government and morality. I’ve
just got one question, “what god is everyone talking about”?
I even
think Christians talk too much about God these days.
Recently I felt compelled to turn off the TV because a Christian
TV personality in a 7 minute span of time said the word God 18 times.
That’s once every 23 seconds. Why
was I so annoyed? Because
she failed to mention Jesus once.
Everything was God. So I’m
now affectionately known by
some as a “God counter”, and at times I am.
It’s part of my statistical nature I guess. But
I do believe this is more than a matter of semantics.
There’s a definite problem evolving here.
Sorry to
say, but I’ve influenced a couple of my friends to have the same
“God counting” compulsion at times, although they don’t actually
keep score as I’ve done. One
friend visited an evangelical outreach service on a Native Peoples
reserve where he heard 5 Christian speakers speak for 3 hours. God was
constantly talked about, but the name of Jesus was seldom heard. With no
real mention of Jesus, and all sorts of talk about God, I wonder what
God the Native People thought the Christians were talking about. Could
they have possibly thought the
Christians were speaking about their god?
Here’s
something quite ironic. I once listened to a pastor speak for
35 minutes. He
mentioned God 21 times and Jesus 1 time, and Jesus didn’t make his
sermon until the 25 minute mark. I
mentioned this in an article I wrote and this same pastor liked my
article so much that he read it to his church, not knowing the pastor I
wrote about was him. I also
counted Gods in an evangelical gathering of various churches, which
started at 6 PM and ended at 7:30 PM.
Outside of the songs we sang, Jesus’ name couldn’t
be heard from anyone’s lips until 7:05.
The total count ended at, God 29 – Jesus 5.
I just don’t know why Jesus loses when God has chosen to make
Him the highest authority over all there is.
Once I
heard a pastor pray for about 4 minutes.
On average, every 4 seconds he said the word God – 54 times in the 4
minutes. His prayed so
fervently. I was just
hoping he wouldn’t faint due to lack of oxygen to his brain because he
hardly stopped to take a breath. I
could have prayed for him to that end, but I was too busy counting Gods.
Anyway, that’s a lot of Gods in such a short span of time,
especially when he never once mentioned Jesus.
I hope we
as Christians understand what God we serve when we talk about Him to the
exclusion of Jesus. He’s
a specific God, not a generic god. As Paul says in Eph. 1:3 and
elsewhere, our “God is the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ”. If
we only speak about God in general terms and leave Jesus out of our
conversation, in these days of multiculturalism, I’m not sure that
people will know what god we’re talking about.
Of course it’s much safer talking about a generic god rather
than our Lord Jesus Christ.
This
really hit home to me when I watched a 911 memorial service held in Now more
than any time in recent history we need to
speak about our Lord Jesus Christ so everyone will know exactly what God
we’re talking about. We
just can’t afford to leave Jesus out of our conversation any longer.
And why should we? God
Himself has chosen Him to be the centerpiece of the gospel message.
He was the One who hung on the cross, rose from the dead, and
returned to Heaven where He is now the supreme authority over all there
is. Besides, Jesus has asked
us to represent Him on earth, just as He represented God His Father on
earth. Do you see that?
Scripture tells us that we are to point people to Jesus, just as
Jesus pointed people to God His Father. Acts
1:7 confirms this when Jesus tells us that we’ll witness to Him when
the Holy Spirit comes into our lives.
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