I'm Still Here, so What?

Well we all had a good laugh.   And of course I got scolded for laughing.   I wonder if all the people who like to scold on Facebook and twitter dare scold people that much in person?

Well I won't scold.  But I do think what got lost in this joke were the victims of Harold Camping.  A lot of people gave up their jobs, their families, their bank accounts, their lives to follow him and preach his "gospel".  Why would they do that?  Because their jobs, their families, their bank accounts and their very lives gave them no purpose or meaning.  They had no hope and Harold Camping gave them a false hope.  He promised them all their problems would go away today.  And now they have even more problems and no hope at all.  And  it is going to be very difficult for them to listen to anyone who calls themselves a Christian.

So no, it's not really very funny.  It makes our jobs as proclaimers of hope to the hopeless that much more difficult but that much more crucial.    

And are we in the mainstream church all that different than Harold Camping?  Maybe we don't offer an exact date but are we offering some far off pie in the sky instead of real hope and purpose and meaning to people  who having difficulty seeing meaning in their lives today?

I'll never forget the question of a friend whose brother died around Easter.  "Christ is risen" she said, then asked "So what?"

We can't just say "Christ is risen"  We have to answer the question, "So what?"