On the Offensive!

I stumbled across this article today.  Have a read…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatresources/4202800/Churchs-Jesus-loves-Osama-sign-criticised.html
What are your feelings towards this?  I have to tell you that my thought process was a strange one.  I found myself thinking – cheesy and poor, until I read this bit…
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“But John Howard, the prime minister, said that the church should have chosen a less offensive way of spreading its message.
“I understand the Christian motivation of the Baptist church,” he said.
“But I hope they will understand that a lot of Australians, including many Australian Christians, will think that the prayer priority of the church on this occasion could have been elsewhere.””
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We should find a ‘less offensive way of spreading the message’ – Hmmm seems like conformity is required here – now what are Jesus/Paul’s thoughts on conforming with the world….
The church in question has stated a fact, that Jesus does love Osamo Bin Laden – the offense lies in this, that we can not understand the grace of God that it would be possible to forgive someone who has done such evil.
It seems that when Christians step out and voice the message of forgiveness they make a bit of a stir.  Also the priority of the church should be elsewhere in terms of prayer…. Again I’m not sure that Mr Howard or the Australian Christians to whom he refers quite get the pray for your enemies thing.  Yet again I reckon that Jesus knew what kind of controversy this would raise!
Well maybe we can sometimes be too apologetic about our faith or worried about what people think of us when we say we believe in Jesus.
When someone takes offense then at what we do or say, remember it’s not you personally but rather Jesus who they are offended by.  And when someone is offended by something, they tend to think about it for a while, interesting – it’s as if Jesus wanted people to think about him and his message!
While I think the Jesus loves Osama board is a little cheesy, I have no problem with the message it delivers or the controversy it has raised – It has done the job for which it was intended!

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