"5 bullets in 'im"

  "I told 'im I'd put 5 bullets in 'im and save the 6th to make sure he's dead!" the old man bellowed at me from across the desk. I wasn't upset, the old man wasn't threatening me. He had come in looking for a small lawnmower to do some trim work. With supplies the way they are this year, we didn't have what he wanted, and so he decided to make small talk about classic cars. 

 The old man had a classic corvette, I could tell he adored this car. He had a cover for it, and he kept it covered. He wanted to hide the car behind some bushes he had planted, but, unfortunately the bushes weren't tall enough. One day, he found to his alarm, someone had uncovered his car and opened the door. A stranger, was touching his car, on his property! The old man bellowed at him. The stranger told him he was interested in buying parts off it. The old man pulled out his gun and threatened to kill him if he didn't leave the property immediately. "I told 'im I'd put 5 bullets in 'im and save the 6th to make sure he's dead!" He bellowed. "I told 'im he mighta scratched the paint when he pulled the cover off!" "You wouldn't do that would you?" I assured him I wouldn't go onto private property and touch someone else's property without consent....the old man calmed down and then he said the statement that is the reason for this whole post. "I hate to be this way, because I am a Christian, but, don't touch my car!" 

 I like the old man, I actually found his honesty refreshing, because, ever since Christians got involved in government around the time of Constantine, I had been concerned that maybe the church suffered as a result. It is a bit intangible, for it's hard to sum up quite how things are worse, but, there was this sense that maybe, being a Christian today, doesn't quite mean the same as it did in the days of the early church, when Christ's beatitudes in Matthew 5 were to be prayerfully considered and obeyed fairly literally. Sometimes today, it seems those thoughts from Christ are more regarded as interesting theories, and obedience to them is optional. In theory, I would love to witness to people about the transformational nature of Christ, and the victory of giving up everything, everything that I thought of as mine and my whole soul as well, and letting Christ rule your whole soul, life, and everything. I have not attained, I am not yet fully surrendered, but I continue to choose that thing of surrender, and I would love to invite others onto this journey. I see people going to 3rd world places and having great results with this message, but, the people I talk to are already Christians. So, how do you lead a Christian to Christ? That is the tricky bit. 

 I would like to thank the old man for what he said to me, I mean no disrespect for calling him that, He has been around and seen many things, and is very wise in many ways because of it. I don't know his name, and I wish I did. He honestly showed me a thing about himself that I suspected to be true of many other people I get to talk to. Many Christians in America value a material possession more than the life of another person, if that other person is unlawfully messing with their property. That is their right, and if that is how they want things to be, I am willing to let them. This is one example of many, I hope you see that I am not wanting to just pick out property value, but to look at the whole nature of our Christianity, of our indwelling Holy Spirit, and see how much of us is the Lord actually allowed to consume. What is the Lord allowed to consume of you?