Living Our Faith

It's always a sign about what you're watching when you hear the same word so often that you need to consult a dictionary. That happened to me this week with the word Apostate. (Yeah, apparently I'm a barrel of laughs).

An Apostate is, "One who has abandoned one's religious faith, a political party, one's principles, or a cause." Though the dictionary told me what the word meant from a technical sense, I started to think about how it applied to what I was watching and our world.

It's hard not to be a little worried about the state of the world based on recent events. It probably doesn't help that I've been watching this TV show called "Sleeper Cell" (hence the Apostate question). It made me think we need a better, modern definition of the word Apostate, something that came to mind again during Faith in Film as we talked about sharing our faith with others.

To me, an Apostate is someone who uses fear, anger, intimidation, and religion as a weapon to control the hearts, minds, and actions of others. It's something we have to guard against both within our own faith traditions and among other faith traditions. Those that misinterpret the Gospel, either purposely or by accident, to serve their own purposes hurt everyone.

While it's important to share the Gospel with our mouths, it's important to model the Gospel through our actions and with our hearts. That's how we can be a true witness, and that's how those we try to reach know what we really believe. The heart of the Gospel is love, not anger and hate.

John 15:12-13 says, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

We can't control others, all we can do is let our light shine through our words and deeds.