If one is to believe everything one sees about Jesus, one might come away with some very dangerous views about Him. Take, for example, the picture above, citing definitive “proof” from the Bible that Jesus supports the homosexual lifestyle. I’ve heard people make the assertion that Jesus overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the temple to fight economic injustice. I once read a pamphlet that portrayed Jesus as a dualist when He says, “I and the Father…” In my recent blog about the women’s march, more than one person challenged my “narrow-mindedness” by claiming that Jesus would have marched beside those women in support of women’s rights in America. And when all else fails, there’s always the “Judge not, lest ye be judged” card people can play to tell others, in effect, to mind their own business. The problem with all of these claims, however, is that they are blatantly untrue.
I don’t know why I even bother with devotions. Almost without fail, something disastrous happens. Family devotions are never peaceful and reverent. We have at least one child complaining about doing them in the first place, another who is interrupting, another who wanders away, and one who obviously isn’t listening to a thing. Inevitably, either Mom or Dad gets mad and yells at them to listen. Not exactly how I envisioned our “quiet time.”
For a kindergartner, my daughter has a pretty decent concept of what baptism is. Her class had a unit on baptism in the fall, and she came home excited about it every day. One day she announced to me seriously, “Mommy, if the devil tempts me, I can tell him, ‘Get away from me, devil. I am baptized.'” Absolutely true, and incredibly mature for a kindergarten student. But how many of us really take our baptisms that seriously?