Becoming to Defeat

I just finished watching Munich. It was an interesting movie on terrorists in Israel and Palestine and the individual and national moral battle that tears people apart. The battle between violence and pacifism was rampant all throughout the movie.

There was one line that stuck out to me throughout that meeting.

“If we don’t become more like them, then we won’t defeat them.”

This line alone I think encapsulates so much of what paralyzes church. I’m not just talking about war either. For some reason, the church thinks that to defeat the world for ‘souls’ they need to compete at their level. So what happens? They become more like them. They start to use the same methods and eventually adapt the same mindsets. Hence, we have the church that uses consumerism to win souls. We have a church that uses flashy lights and videos to compete against the entertainment of the world. We have a church that markets their successes and covers up their weaknesses. We have a church that pushes people into positions of power that are already successful or cool and pushes aside those that don’t have much to offer. We have a church that ceases to be the church because they are way too much like the world. We have a church that commends and supports war when we are acted upon violently.

Instead what if the church became the opposite of the world to ‘defeat’ the world and bring forth the Kingdom of God. What if the church used selflessness whenever there was selfishness? What if the church took those that didn’t have much to offer and moved them to the center of attention? What if the church intentionally did their good deeds in private and was honest and confessed to their weaknesses and failures? What if instead of using money and pouring millions of dollars and hours into our ministries, we simply opened up our doors and started pouring our time into people? What if instead of bombing people that bomb us we bring them something they need and help them get what they want instead of just giving us what we want.

The way the church wins. The way the church is successful. The way that the Kingdom of God moves forward is not by becoming more like them and taking our cues from them, its being more like Christ, it is almost doing the exact opposite. Welcome to the Kingdom.