Smiling, arrogant hate mongering. God weeps.

        I went to see Cher the other night, wonderful concert, checked all the boxes, enormous crowds. It is amazing to me how this 72 year old diva speaks to such a large and diverse audience and still moves it on stage, physically and vocally. 

       There is another 72 year old that also attracts large crowds. However people usually do not pay to see him and quite often they are payed to attend. It must be a real ego booster to have such throngs around you. Of course you must have something to say and Mr. Trump comes armed with standardized one liners and hate mongering. Quite a difference in people who are 72.  Polar opposites?

       Jesus also garnered great crowds. Who knows quite how many, but enough that Jesus had given thought to being crushed.  People seek Jesus for several reasons. The crowds who needed cures are one. These are the literally and figuratively ill. The marginalized, the outcasts. These are also the people seeking a real relationship with God. Seekers listen in the desert of life, seekers listen for God's voice.

       There is a whole other group of people who feel that they have a relationship with God. It is not static or growing, it is what it is. These people have 'the word' that they have already interpreted for their own means and they need nothing more. They already claim salvation and the privilege somehow to judge everyone else. These people do not see The Word and they do not really seek Jesus. They have some bastardized, contorted version of truth.

        The real seekers of a relationship with God are willing to be cured, willing to change, willing to give up and have a stirring in their soul for a deeper relationship with God.  They speak less and listen more - and they do, they love. People who seek Jesus know that they are while they are loved like everyone else, they are not yet complete, not fulfilled and have no right to judge anyone else or their journey to wholeness. 

         Hate mongering crowds are smug, calculating, manipulative, arrogant and in reality, as far as one can get from a real meaningful relationship with God. They speak so loudly they can barely hear themselves, let alone God's voice. I often refer to these people as fake Christians. These people wield scripture like hammers and shoot them like bullets of hate and self righteousness.  This does not speak of love. It does not speak of humbleness of heart. This does not sound like anything that Jesus would say or do.

      There are plenty of crowds out there, sometimes mobs.  Some speak to your soul, speak of love and speak of a loving and all embracing God. Other crowds speak of hate, judgment, blame and exclusion.. Be careful which you aim for, which crowds you teach are worthy of your time and attention. 

Mark 3:7-19

 Jesus departed with his disciples to the lake, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon. He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him; for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.

 He went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Then he went home;