Jesus Cropped from the Picture

Jesus Cropped from the Picture

A Wartime Footing or Peacetime Mentality? The final reason people feel unfulfilled is because they approach the Christian life as peacetime soldiers . Soldiers have more accidents and get in more interpersonal conflict during peacetime than they do during times of war. Life is difficult in wartime, but monotonous in peace. I experienced a dramatic contrast between a Peacetime Mentality and a Wartime Footing when the Rodney King verdict was announced in 1992. I was only blocks away when the Los Angeles Riots erupted at Florence and Normandie. I remember mobs of looters forming, fires breaking out, and fearing for my life as I drove the 12 miles north to my home from South Central Los Angeles. As I pulled off the interstate, I breathed a sigh of relief. Still shaken, I turned a corner and saw a man casually hosing off his sidewalk, smoking a cigar. I felt the urge to pull over and angrily shout at the man, “Don’t you know there is a riot breaking out?! People are dying, looters are ransacking businesses, and the city is being destroyed! Don’t you care?” Then I realized, he had no personal experience with the danger I had just encountered. For him, it was just another sunny day in Southern California. The reaction of this man is much like American Christians today. Peacetime Christians have no existential sense of the spiritual danger all around them. They do not feel the persistent war between the two kingdoms that is so tangible to the rest of the world. A calm suburban environment can lull SLIM Christians to sleep. When tragedy hits,

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