2008-09-01

Who Wants to be Like That?

I have a daily Dilbert calendar on my desk. Dilbert is great cartoon, IMHO. You can never have too much Dilbert. Anyway, a strip the other day featured Dogbert talking to Dilbert. If you're not familiar with Dilbert, yes - Dogbert a talking dog (what comic is complete without at least one talking animal?). Dogbert is always trying to make money or scam someone in one way or another.

In this particular comic Dogbert does all the talking. He says, "I decided to start a discount religion." "The tithing would only be 5% and I'd let people sin as much as they wanted." In the last frame he says, "The only problem is that I don't want to spend time with anyone who would join that sort of religion." It's not the funniest Dilbert comic ever... but it sure got me to thinking.

Why doesn't Dogbert want to be friends with people who'd join that religion? Probably because we don't like people who take shortcuts or who cheat. There's some sort of honor or status from doing things the "right" way. We don't want to be associated with people who would join a cut-rate religion that allows them take shortcuts. It's just not right. Yet many Christians do support taking shortcuts. Many Christians don't pay tithe and offerings. And there's plenty of Christians who pick and choose what parts of the Bible are important to them. Then we wonder why Christians are viewed less than favorably by the public at large. One recent (questionable) poll even showed Evangelic Christians to rank very low in trustworthiness.

If we know cheaters aren't appreciated, why do we cheat? If we sign up to join a community, whether that's Christian, Buddhist, the Boy Scouts or whatever, why don't we willingly do our best to live up to that communities standards? That's worth pondering about...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are also among those who pick and choose unless you observe all 613 commandments of the Law.

WE must have a consistent hermeneutic, or principle, when deciding what to keep and what to leave out. That is why covenant theology and dispensational theology go down opposite roads.

As a dispensationalist I keep only that which is repeated after Calvary to the church in terms of grace and faith.