Crowded at the Summit

Today I was going to write a little about the "offense" of the Christian Gospel message. (Although I'm as committed a Christian as I know how to be, not every post here will make that obvious.)

Before starting, I Googled the phrase "gospel is offensive" to determine where St. Paul writes about this. Several places it turns out. But it was also a little daunting to find references to a couple dozen blog posts which, in one way or another, were making my point and, I expect, doing a better job than I would do.

You climb a mountain, reach the summit, and then find dozens of folks who've already planted their flags. Shoot, it felt so good when I came up with this. But, of course, I didn't really come up with it.

But you know what? That's absolutely okay. Thinking original thoughts is, of course, exhilarating when you can manage it. But scaling your own process of learning and experience and then making a thought your own (regardless of origin), learning a lesson that leads you to a conclusion (summit), that's an absolutely good thing as well.

So, my little "flag" was going to be something like this:

The Gospel, by definition, is offensive to many. But my job as a Christian is not to be "not offensive," but to try to make sure that if people are offended, they're offended at the right things. The absolute waste is when we, in the household of Faith, give people dozens of legitimate reasons to be offended at other things. Kind of a bait-and-switch in reverse so the Gospel may never receive the full consideration it needs.

I did some solo climbing on a not-so-high hill to get there, but ultimately it's gratifying to join the companionable crowd at the summit.