"Whatcha Do That For?!"

Part 1: The Story

I ran across a Christian Missionary group the other day. They had just gotten back from the Phillipines and were happy about their great success. Their primary functions as young missionaries, they told me, was to go to the schools in certain areas and "Preach the Gospel" to young Catholics..........? I pointed out that it seemed a little redundant to be flying to another country to convert Christians into...well...Christians. They were seriously confused by my comment.

I couldn't let the issue drop, and so I began to talk to the people who organized and ran the missionary trip. I asked them, "Why?"
They told me, "We teach a more personal relationship with Christ instead of with a large organization....." refering to the Catholic church.
This is something that their church believes so passionately that they will fund a half dozen teenagers and four adults to fly to the Phillipines every year.

My ability to converse with these people was then abruptly cut short, because they brought up the idea of football. When I told them I didn't watch very much, they didn't want anything else to do with me. These people loved football. That's just about all they talked about. Their missionary church uniforms were even sports colors (I thought they were a baseball team when I first saw them). Their mission group was sponsored by the father of a popular college football star (a Heismann Trophy winner) and they just couldn't wait to see the Jaguars play again this year.

Part 2: The Point?

This mission trip presented an oppurtunity to the children and adults involved. While the adults who organized the trip may have been completely mis-lead about what they thought was Truth, the oppurtunity was still there, and it is the same oppurtunity which is provided for all of us when we are given the option to act or do anything.
Know, however, that our actions in the present are reflections of the choice we made while standing at the crossroads of this oppurtunity. Our actions will reveal the Truth behind our motivations, even if we would hide behind false intentions.
These people were in a place in their minds where they thought they had made the right choice and stood with Truth and with their God, but in reality,
people died while the missionaries wasted their time in front of Christians discussing the perks of Christianity, in a healthy Christian way, using "Christian language" no doubt. Those teenagers will never know how many sick, orphaned, poor, imprisoned, or hungry people they could have helped.

Part 3: What Opputunity? Stop talking around the issue!

The Oppurtunity involves asking yourself why you do something. In the case of these missionaries, they had to realize whether or not they were acting for the Love of themselves, or because they Loved the people they were going to meet.
Deciding Love happens on multiple levels of thought, both conscous and sub-conscous. The men who organized the mission trip knew they loved football and that they Loved Jesus Christ, but they didn't realize that their Love for the Game had polluted everything they did. The "Mission Field" became a playing field, the "Ball" became Jesus Christ, and "Points" were scored whenever someone converted from one denomination of Christianity to another. Their entire program was engaged in a high cost, no-stakes, waste of time game of "God-Ball" and they had no idea. They still thought they were following the commands of their Scripture.

Being a part of Inversehalo, the first thing you have to learn is what it feels like to Care, and to be honest about how you feel. A person cannot serve Truth without honesty, and acting a lie in the name of a Truth will only lead to someone else's suffering and death. The Responsibility of Inversehalo Reformers is to seek out Love for others, and find the Love for themselves there and not on the alters of immediate gratification.Your intentions will always be known.