Outside The Gate: Living Beyond Boundries

One of the great things about this blog is all kinds of people read it. I get email from homosexuals, muslims, protestants, catholics, non-believers and others from all over the place.

Some love it, some hate it and the world goes round and round. I tend to learn more from people who disagree with me.

When I started this 3 years ago, I promised myself that if I ever found myself preaching to the choir and every response was total agreement, I would unplug this site. That has not happened. The challenges have caused me to search, think and go deeper then just some catchy headline. For that I thank all of you. Yet, I wonder if any of this has had the same effect on any of you?

I remember a story about Mother Teresa asking permission to minister to people on the streets in Calcutta. She was told it was too dangerous beyond the convent walls. That struck me. Often times we build our own walls of comfort. We wring our hands over the suffering that goes on just outside those walls, but we never open the gate and dare to venture out into that other world.

I'm going to get on my soapbox here so be warned. Why are we so afraid? I have been exposed to more types of "Christianity" then one can count. Some is wonderful, others make me cringe. But we all seem to be guilty (self included) of building the Christian bubble. We freak out if anyone different comes into our space. We like the people in our building on Sunday but heaven forbid we have to talk to someone who does not accept our own personalized version of Jesus.

You know, if you have any faith you won't implode if you talk to a mormon or a rabbi or anyone else for that matter. You might actually learn something and be able to present your own faith in manner besides yelling "because the Bible says so" I challenge you to examine your environment. How big is your world?

No comments: