Often I get good content for this article from a Sunday School lesson or a weekly message from a pulpit. This week, my Sunday School lesson was one of those times. The name of it was “Faith on Display in Your Actions.” The lesson started out by giving statistics about 68 percent of Americans claiming to be Christians – yet the moral and ethical standards of American are seriously lacking. The writer said that “The problem is not with what people believe, but that too many of us do not live what we claim to believe.”
My mother often observed that if churches and Christians ministered to the needs of people as Jesus taught us to, we would not have all of these government programs doing our jobs. Think about how much mess government “help” has brought our country. We are now at a point where that mess is handicapping our economy and lifestyles because people choose to not work, but rather to nurse Mama Government.
Christians will say they believe in the power of God to do all things. Yet scientific research shows that the United States is one of the sickest societies in the world. I once was in a bible study where the leader had grown up in Africa before moving to the United States. He talked about the frequent miraculous healings that took place in worship services in Africa. I asked the group why they thought we did not see that much here. The leader’s comment was that “In Africa, all we had was God. In the United States, we put our trust in doctors, nurses, and hospitals.”
While 68 percent of us may claim to believe as a Christian, a much smaller percent live that. We can’t tell the faith of a non-Christian from a Christian by looking at lives. Maybe if we start to truly live what we believe, we will see a positive change in our own lives and the lives of our families, schools, communities, states, and nations.
