straining at gnats and swallowing camels

This week two seemingly disconnected events took place on the world stage that accentuate the need for the advance of the gospel. Stay with me here.

The first was a lawsuit brought against the Catholic church. From cnn.com:

An Italian court is tackling Jesus -- and whether the Roman Catholic Church may be breaking the law by teaching that he existed 2,000 years ago. The case pits against each other two men in their 70s, who are from the same central Italian town and even went to the same seminary school in their teenage years. The defendant, Enrico Righi, went on to become a priest writing for the parish newspaper. The plaintiff, Luigi Cascioli, became a vocal atheist who, after years of legal wrangling, is set to get his day in court later this month.
"I started this lawsuit because I wanted to deal the final blow against the Church, the bearer of obscurantism and regression," Cascioli told Reuters.

The fact that this lawsuit even gets traction in the seat of Roman Catholicism is telling enough.

The second signficant event was the rise to political power of Hamas in the Palestinian territory. For those who have any question about the platform of this terrorist organization, take a look at their charter:

The Islamic Resistance Movement strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine... Therefore our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious...The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, killing the Jews. When the Jews hide behind stones and trees, they will say ‘O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him...’ Resisting and quelling the enemy is the individual duty of every Muslim, male or female. A woman can go out to fight the enemy without her husband's permission, and so does the slave: without his master's permission...”Thus, there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Ji’had. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with...The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion... It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, the Rotary, and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions...

Again, no explanation needed here.

Mark Steyn has written an excellent piece in the Wall Steet Journal in which he points out that the west might as well get used to a major democraphic shift toward radical Islam. There are now more muslims who attend mosques in England than Christians who attend church. This is the trend all over Western Europe. Tim Keller points out that Christiandom is now a thing of the past. Western Europe ceded it's Christian roots in favor secular humanism and the Church never saw it coming. The church in Europe saw every other part of the world as a mission field without noticing that their own cities were becoming increasingly post Christian.

The same thing is happening in America. According to the latest Barna research, 80% of the unchurched in America are people who have just stopped going to church. The fastest growing group of unchurched are from (guess who) Baptists. And the youngest generation is bailing disproportionately.

Steyn makes a great case that the biggest mistake of the west is that we worry about all of the things that don't matter without worrying about all the things that do. He was talking about economics, but he might as well have been talking about missiology.

I agree with Keller who reminds us that the church in America can no longer see herself as the seat of Christiandom (a shrinking market), but must now make the switch to a missional appraoch. Increasingly, our biggest mission field is the one we live in. And the world is transitioning more and more away from the influence of the gospel.

In this new reality, the Church no longer has the luxury of majoring on minors and narrowing our fellowship over the non-essentials in our doctrine (Hear Jesus: "these you should have done and not left the other undone"). God in His providence will accomplish His purposes one way or another. The question is whether we will join Him or be left behind because of our gnat straining camel swallowing ways.