In Matthew 5:44 Jesus says, "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you."
Zechariah 7:9-10 says, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.”
Discuss with your parents the following questions...
In what ways have American churches failed to obey these verses from God's word?
How do you think this has affected the growth of government social reforms and programs?
In American churches I believe that most ministers do a good job of preaching to love your enemies; however, they sometimes fail to preach this important lesson. In fact, some preachers don't really act all that Christianly outside of church. It destroys the urge to be a Christian. It really makes me upset, and I think someone needs to put a stop to it. My pastor , however, always does a good job emphasizing that lesson.
ReplyDeleteNow social reform groups and programs don't follow that lesson either. Pastors, preachers, and reverends need to step up their game everywhere. They need to encourage love and not be a hypocrite. They need to do as they preach. Without them, many people might not become Christians. Social reform groups and teachers of the Word everywhere are keeping the seams together with all of their might, and people everywhere need to help them out. Social reform groups would help so many homeless, hungry, and poor people. They would change America, and they would also help people follow the Lord. We need to pick up the slack.
Ethan Powell
Churches have failed to do this by turning their backs to those who don't pay their tithe. I was working at rescue Atlanta when this man told me that when he went to a church they wouldn't let him in and fed him out the back door after the service. Churches need to realize that its not about who goes in, its about who comes out. For example the person who walks in the church could be led astray but when that person walks out the church,hopefully they will be a changed person. This is how the church has failed today.
ReplyDeleteMany churches preachers don't preach from the bible so their congregation doesn't here the truth. The pastors preach what the congregation wants to hear which doesn't challenge them to follow key verses like Matthew 5:44. Many churches teach tolerance and that everyone should be accepted. For example a church in the USA took down their cross because it offended the atheists. They need to love and pray for them, but stand for His truth and promises. They shouldn't build the church if they are not 100 percent sure that their church will teach the truth of God.
ReplyDeleteIf the church did its job and reached out to the poor and the widow there would be no need for the government programs and reforms to step in.
Sid Brendel
Churches in America today think they’re following all the rules or at least they try to. When Osama Benladen died everyone was cheering. That isn’t right because I bet you most of the people of the church were cheering their heads of to. It says in the bible you should love your enemies more then yourself. In the bible verses it’s saying that you shouldn’t hate anyone because that builds up evil inside. Evil is against God’s word and if someone hates you you should show kindness to them and maybe they’ll be kind back.
DeleteSocial reforms and programs don’t follow the bible completely either. They sometimes just stick to what easier not what’s right. If programs stepped up and helped the poor and bad people the government wouldn’t need to. Doing this would benefit the church and the government. What I’m trying to prove is that if more people volunteered it would benefit the society, government, and church.
Lots of or churches today are failing to deliver on these verses because we ignore the hard parts of the Bible that we don't think are easy. Lots of churches do great on the love your enemy parts but some don't. For example, many Christians today believe that because someone is gay, you must look down upon them. As sinful as being gay may be, the only way that we will ever get them to understand God's love for them is if we pray for them. Just because someone's sin may be specified in the Bible as wrong, as all sins are, doesn't mean they are any less loved By God than you or another Christian, and our churches need to learn that to spread the word, we must drop our prejudice.
ReplyDeleteIf all of our churches did this and reached out to someone no matter the cost or their sins, the government wouldn't need to step in to help the churches. Our love should be spreading through the community and across the world, but our prejudice is preventing us. If we followed these two verses, the Christian community would be growing so much faster than it is now, and without using government funding to help the people we should be helping already.
Natalie Bell
American churches today are doing a great job of preaching to love your enemies. However, it is not the lesson that counts but it is what the preachers do while not preaching to other people. You can give a whole lesson on a verse and then turn around and disobey it. I have heard about of few atheists or Muslims who get mad at Christians for being to open about there faith. After that, most preachers just walk away and do nothing about it. A good way to handle this is to stay, but don't talk to them, and show kinds deeds an every day Christian would do. Think about what Jesus would do. Would he turn his back on them? Many churches have faced these problems. Another way to handle this is to just pray for them, and God's light will show. Preachers need to be aware of these things and never give up. They need to teach the lessons they teach to their students as well as themselves. preachers need to start getting on task and focusing more. That's the problem that most churches in America have right now.
ReplyDeleteJackson Hofmann
It's very true that American churches are not living by the "love your enemies as yourself" rule. Churches nowadays stay in their own bubble and usually do not welcome outsiders. This is why any non-Christians believe that Christians are hypocrites, and in this case we are. Although some churches do welcome new people, they still are bagging on their enemies. This is a turn-off for possible Christians, and the result is more enemies that we bag on, and less people who will get to have eternal life with God. It's a never ending cycle.
ReplyDeleteThis has very much affected the size of our government. People are always looking for people to help them. They are always looking for someone bigger than themselves to take care of their problems. And if they don't believe in the Lord as their "bigger person", they might look to the government to solve all of their problems. Some American citizens want the government to be bigger so they won't have to work for anything and so the government will solve the problems they can easily solve by themselves with a little perseverance. This group of people is growing bigger, and so is the government to appease this ever-growing group. The government is taking over because people are putting their trust in the government instead of God.
This was Anna Kate Peterson
DeleteChurchgoers don't seem to love their enemies as much as God wants them to. They judge gays rather than accept them. The bible says that even a gay person can love God and we are supposed to love them and leave the judging part to God.
ReplyDeleteAlso, with the bad economy that we have today a lot more people are coming to church to find help. Most of the time these people are not actually attending a church, they just know it's a place they can come to get help with their bills. In our church this is affecting our youth and children's programs, and it is getting hard to pay for our church's bills. This makes our church counsel fight because some people say we shouldn't be giving money to poor people who aren't trying. Other people say this is exactly what God tells us to do.
This is also what the Republicans and Democrats are fighting about. Obama is trying to put in more programs to help us show kindness and mercy to one another. The Republicans are trying to get rid of some of these same programs. They think that more of these poorer people should be persevering to get a job and make some money to take care of their families.
The church in general is doing a great job in the lives of non-Christians, but America is struggling. It seems like the United States would be an easy place to preach the gospel, yet it is just the opposite. American churches have failed to do their duty and be a good example. When someone looks at a Christian’s actions, they should notice something different about them; instead, those people see a stubborn, selfish person who thinks that they are better than everyone else in the world. The American church needs to teach Christians how to share the gospel. Christians tend to hate non-Christians and atheists. We need to love and pray for these people, not get in their faces.
ReplyDeleteBecause the church isn’t reaching out to the needy, the government has to. If more people became Christians, then the government wouldn’t have to do as much work. Social reform groups are created because people aren’t satisfied with their life and get addicted to drugs and alcohol. If these people became Christians, they could fix their life. Social reform groups are too many and too commonplace. All of these problems are present because Christians aren’t doing their job. The American church needs to love their enemies and live up to their duty.
Daniel Justice
The church is supposed to follow God’s Word and keep it holy. Some churches follow some of the Bible but not other parts of it. The church is supposed to help all people including our enemies. We are supposed to bless and love our enemies as stated in Matthew, but we, as a church, tend to ignore and forget about our enemies. Instead of blessing everyone, churches focus on their own members.
ReplyDeleteBecause the church disobeys the Word of God in this way, the government has to step in to help people. Zechariah says to help everyone, even poor or evil people. If the churches helped more and provided for people more, there would be no need for the government to provide for homeless, jobless, or hungry people. If the church fulfilled its mission in providing for the less fortunate, government social reforms and programs would not be necessary.
We feel like the church has not failed in loving our enemies. We do our best to help people in need, no matter if they are our enemies or not, to the best of our ability. We must not let hate devour us but we must let love flow out of us into our enemies and into this world. The church itself is trying to its best ability but sometimes our best is not good enough mainly because of our strength. Our strength has to be stronger enableing us to be able to make the desicions that will benefit the church.
ReplyDeleteThe government's reforms and programs have grown because of our lack of involvement. Although some reforms and programs are good, some weaken the church to some degree by weakening us in numbers or maybe even faith in our religon. If we have more christians in high leadership, we can make more reforms or programs that will benfit us to a high degree.
I think that some churches are failing in america because some wont take all the Bible says into practice. They would only take the easier parts, or snippits of what the verses says. Some dont base their ideas off of the Bible, but off their opinions, and they may be wrong.People deserve to hear the truth, and they may not get to if they go to a church that doesnt get their ideas directly from the Bible.
ReplyDeleteI think this could definately lead to the government trying to get more involved in our churches by trying to control what we can say or put up in our churches because of the other religions. But then again this is against the constitution because religion is a free thing in America, so they probably cant do that. Although, i do think that they will try to get more involved in churches' programs, and that would be a bad thing.
BY: Emily Kendrick
A lot of churches tend to pass harsh judgement on people they view as "sinners". Many of those "sinners" fall into that category because of tragedies that have occurred in there lives and other circumstances beyond there control and many churches instead of recognizing that they need help and people to pray for them pass judgement and say that there bad people and beyond help. When the churhes and communities fail to help them the government steps in and helps them by forming social programs.
ReplyDeleteMarin Winter
The bible instructs us to love our enemies. Do we really love them? Can we love them? That’s what our society is like these days’ people always holding grudges, being jealous, and etc. American churches don’t obey this command God has given us. We need to follow the example Jesus set for us. When I am in a situation similar to this I think about What Would Jesus Do?
ReplyDeleteI think this has affected the growth of government social reforms and programs because many people rely on the government instead of the church. We need to change that and let the people rely on the church for its religious answers and not the government. That is why we need to spread the good news all around the world. All we have to do is obey him and spread the good news and he will reward is in the best way you could ever dream. This is why we must stay true to God.
I think American churches have failed at loving there enimies.Most churches usually just bless the members of the church. I rarely hear pastors bless people outside of the church. The only time they pray for someone outside of the church is when they hear something bad happen on the news. The Bible tells you to love everyone and sometime churches dismiss people who do wrong. This effects the growth of social reforms, but it affects churches in a bad way. If people realize that they may not be accepted by the church they will stop asking the church to help them. When people stop asking the church for help, and when people stop praying I feel like the social problems go up. The social problems go up because people think they have no one to rely on so the just give up.
ReplyDeletePeople dont really pay attention to honoring your mother and father. In about all of the youth programs now we just sing some songs pray and go into a small group and mess around. We dont really learn any messages. In my opinion small groups should be banned and we should all go to reagular service. But about honoring your mother and father no one pays attention to it. Even if it is just little things like cleaning our rooms or taking out the trash we still need to listen. Another big problem would be loving your enemies. No one pays attention to this either but yet we need to its one of the ten commandments. If someone walks up to anyone and says something mean we are gonna do something about it if its not saying something back or gossiping about them or even just hitting them in the face. Ithink these are both major things that we need to fix and it is messing up everyone today because we arent listening to them. If we listen to these things everyones lifes will be so much easier but I dont think anyone really relizes that.
ReplyDeleteThe church has not failed but has not reached its potential for caring for the needy. The church should be taking more responsibility for feeding the homeless and providing for the less fortunate, but because of the government, they are not doing all they can because of the government agencies and programs designed to help the needy. If the government was less involved, churches would be inclined to do more and the less fortunate would be better taken care of. The church should take the majority of the responsibility for providing food, clothes, shelter, and other neccesities to those who truly need it. The church would do a better job becasue they inereact with the people in need and care about their well-being.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe it is the church's fault, it's the government becasue people assume it is the goverment's responsibilty becasue the goverment has taken on this role.This has affected governmet social reforms tremendously. The government is involved in almost every aspect of our lives but should not be. The goverment employees are not looking out for the country's best but for their own best interest. They are just doing their job and not taking good care of those who are in need.
American churches are clearly failing to obey God's word and standards in some categories in today's society. Often Churches don't want to go out of their comfort zones. By doing this they are limiting the amount of believers and increasing the number of critics of Christianity or nonbelievers. An "enemy" for a christian can be someone who hates and ridicules the Christian faith. Jesus said to love our enemies. Although it will always be a hard thing to follow, we should live up to God's high standards. Faith without actions is dead. The American church is failing to teach the importance of prayer and sharing our faith. If we pray for our enemies and leave it in God's hands then America would be a better place.
ReplyDeleteThis problem has made our government bigger with more power. Today people are looking for someone to help them and take care of them. For the more people that that someone isn't the Lord, the more necessity there is for government social reforms and programs. When people start to rely on the government, they become lazy. Today, American churches need to preach that God is stronger than the government.
Jimmy McCarthy
I think that a lot of churchs do try to follow these verses but some churchs have conflicts within the church and people gossip and spread rumors and treat each other bad even though the Bible says to love each other. Most churchs help feed the poor and they give clothes to poor people. They also help the children without fathers but some churchs just want people to pay their tithes and give money. They get so caught up in what people look like and what people can do for the church instead of what the church can do for people. All churchs should make everyone feel comfortable no matter what clothes they wear and noone should ever be turned away or made to feel unwelcome. They should teach these verses to the children in Sunday School and to the adults in church and the preachers should lead by example. If they hear someone talking about someone or starting rumors, they should stop it and remind them of what the Bible says but because we just let people do these things people get hurt and they blame the church and then they don't come back.
ReplyDeleteI think that the government tries to form these reform groups to help but they are not allowed to do it with God as a part of it because the government doesnt allow employees to carry Bibles or talk about the Lord or pray with people amd stuff. So the children who dont have fathers are more likely to get into trouble and go to jail or they stay in trouble a lot and then adults treat them differently because they think that they are bad kids instead of being good to the kids and trying to help them.
I think that both the church and the reform groups have good intentions but the poor population keeps getting bigger but the churchs and the reform groups aren't growing as fast so they can't help all of the needy people. So more groups get formed and the Bible gets more and more removed from the situation instead of being the most important part.
I believe that many of our churches aren't exactly failing to deliver these messages. At my church we learn that you should love your enemies. They also inform us that when your people have done wrong to us, we should forgive them, forget what happened, and pray for them. For example, loving our enemies isn’t always easy to do because it’s difficult to love people that have done wrong to you. We know that its God’s responsibility to take care of those people, which is why we should pray for them.
ReplyDeleteThis has affected the growth of programs and social reforms because the Democrats and Republicans constantly fight against each other. It affects the people because they can never agree on anything. Also if they were able to get along and if they respected each other and follow God’s word I believe they would be able to accomplish more and we Americans wouldn’t be affected.
Most churches seem to preach that you need to love your enemies, but the people of the church do not practice what they here. They may listen on and on about how everyone is a child of God and we need to love our neighbor, yet at the end of the day the church congregation is still prejudice against different groups of people. For example, one of the only places that is normally divided by race is the church. Blacks and whites attend different churches, even though they can attend the same church, most people choose to go to a church filled with people of their same race because if you are the only person of a different race in a building, you feel uncomfortable and insecure. Most people feel this way because the congregation reacts negativity to your presence which is different from the standard. The people of the church more often than not rebukes change and turns away people that are different than them or people that have different beliefs. Some churches also are normally separated by class. Richer people tend to attend bigger churches while the lower classes attend smaller churches. This creates a barrier between the classes, and makes it so when the middle or upper class tries to help the lower class, they don't actually know what those people are going through. The barrier causes the upper classes to just blindly preform charitable acts. For example, some charity groups' member don't actually want to be there; some are just being dragged there by their parents or school. Yet, there are always exception to the statements above, and the church isn't a living being therefore, it cannot be flawed. The flaw lies within the people of the church. All people are different, so some treat the same situations differently. So if you have a church filled with caring accepting people, you won't have these problems,but if the congregation is really snobbish, they might be a bit slower to accept you and may put less effort into their work.
ReplyDeleteThis affects the government because some congregations might be less proactive at lending a hand to the needy, so the government has to step in to help them get things back in order. Anything that the church fails to do (ie. community service, helping to unemployed, etc...), the government has to do for them because essentially the congregation makes up a large part of the community and population, so they are very influential on the country.
In our churches they preach about what is right and wrong. The bible Is not about right or wrong it is about making the right decision to honor God. There is almost never going to be a clear answer to our problems. The church can also be self centered sometimes. They give money, money, and a little bit more money. Money is not the issue we need to put others before ourselves. Do good deeds with no desire to get anything at all in return. We need to shift the focus off of ourselves and give it to the less fortunate. These people need care, love, and compassion. A stack of dollar bills is not going to last a lifetime, but how you impact them will last forever. There was a Texas Gov. That said,"if you were born on third base that doesn't meen that you got a triple. People that want to be the norm and don't want to push the limits of your abilities and stretch your faith keep on giving money and acting like a Christian you can do that, but if you want to be special that go that extra mile if someone says jump reply with HOW HIGH
ReplyDeleteOur churches have taught us to love our friends and our enemies. We are called to love those who hate us.We are also supposed to forgive and forget meaning we forgive someone and we dont hold a grudge. After we are called to pray for them as well. As hard as this may be, we have to do whats right.People often do one of two things: hold a grudge, or say they have forgiven but really havnt.Churches sometomes dont focus on this issue as much but focus more on Godly things which is not bad but they forget about this problem. we need to remember to love our friends and our enemies.
ReplyDeleteWe decided that since they are your enemies, they are harder to love, and because we are humans, we don't love our enemies. Our enemies are mean to us, and say hurful things to us, so it's harder to love them than it is to love your family. The churches have moved away from that because they neglect people. Not all churches do that, and the ones that except many people, have moved away from that because it's so hard.
ReplyDeleteThis affects our society because, to tell the truth, there are fewer Christians than there used to be. The lack of Christians means that there are not as many truthful people, and in our society, bribing can happen. Once you bribe someone, they act like your friend, but really, they just want money. That's why many people become enemies because they want something, instead of treating the other person with the respect that all humans deserve.
I think some churches don't really revolve around god. They just play games and then say listen to god!!! but really nobody takes that into their mind and they don't even listen. But my church goes really deep into the word of god. That is because I am not cristrian I am catholic. So catholic churches are different in someways that a cristian church.
DeleteEven tho I go to a christian school, Catholics can also be Christians. The bible verses are not getting talked about because no one wants to respect their enemies. I don't know anyone who wants to do that even tho you shouldn't have enemies because love your neighbor as your self. The second one is saying to love everyone and these two are probably the 2 hardest one to do because everybody makes everybody mad so that is why not very many people get taught them or they do get taught those verses but the just font listen.
Churches many times just disinclude others that aren't Christian . Also sometimes they ignore the societys problems and just go off and do their own thing. The churches now aays just ignore people who aren't Christian but instead to make them look good they help the homeless. Also the government doesn't help either by taking prayer away in public schools. Lastly the government makes sure that Christianity stays out of all the communities and all public schools
ReplyDeleteMitchell Ryan
the churches have not been doing there part.the churches have been turning away people because of race and other things.this is major problem in society.people are now affected in many ways beacause they have no where to turn.
ReplyDeletethis has decresed and increased reform groups. reform groups have decreased because people are afraid to get turned down again but at the same time they have increase. they have increased because people know that can get help and care at the reform groups.
Noah Ruffin
American churches have in many ways failed to persue the verses above. The fact that we should forgive others and forget their offense against us not properly enforced in todays churches. Often it is Christians who disobey this rules, so nonvbelievers most of the time see us. Because of this, they have a bad idea about Christianity as a whole. We often hold grudges against those who harm us, but this is the complete opposite of what Christ commands us to do. When we do this, often people are influenced by you, and you do not even know it. This is why in American churches, this fact is not emphasized enough, and it has its effect on today's culture.
ReplyDeleteRight now, the gorvernment has a similar issue. Democrats like to blame the poor for not working hard in life, and they take it out on the rich. They tax the rich and give it to the ppor. This is not right. The rich should give out of the kindness of their hearts, and they should not be forced by the government. The republicans believe in this issue. So, if American pastors would enfoce these points in their Churches more, these problems in the government could be resolved.