It may not be the politically correct way to say it, but sometimes I feel like the world has gone crazy. There are days when the common sense, decency, and values that I saw in my youth seem to have vanished from our culture. Common sense no longer seems common. Decency is no longer honored. And the values of yesterday feel strangely distant.
Take for instance these events. Presidential debates need a seven second delay or a PG-13 rating. Men must now be called biological males. Teen age girls can enter male locker rooms in a public school. The NFL won’t properly discipline or fire players who beat women unconscious. And it is now considered a public health issue that nuns provide free birth control. What in blazes is going on around here?
While it is easy to feel that the world has gone crazy, it has always abided by its own set of rules.
We live in a post-Christian society. The moral landscape of our day rests on shifting sand. Everyone does what is right in their own eyes, instead of following God’s example. The culture and practices of Christianity are mostly rejected or, worse, forgotten.
When we look at Scripture, the early church operated in this kind of environment. There was little or no Christian culture, only a cosmopolitan and secular society that focused on self. Rome and Corinth believers needed to be a community of contrast, one that shows the world a better way to live. They were encouraged to live and demonstrate light in a dark and twisted world. When we do this it shows that no one is beyond redemption and that God has a particularly soft spot for sinners. Messages that our world desperately needs to hear and understand.
And so again, it is up to the Church to live and act in a different way from our world. A way that dispenses grace like Christ and honors God. A way that demonstrates the Sermon on the Mount and the Great Commission.
We have the power to change this crazy world, not by looking down on it in disgust, but up to God, the One who consistently calls us to become the people we were designed to be. May God empower us to live as first century Christians who showed grace, compassion, and mercy to a crazy world.
God Squad 
Russia Bans Evangelism
Posted in News & Commentary, tagged christian, church, evangelism, persecution, prayer, protestant, religious freedom, russia, Yarovaya laws on July 25, 2016|
Forget military aggression. Russia just made it illegal to talk about Jesus outside of a church!
Russia recently passed a set of anti-terrorism laws known as the Yarovaya package, which places broad limitations on missionary work, including preaching, teaching, and any activity designed to recruit people into a religious group. When it became a public law on July 20, it rolled back 19 years of religious freedom.
While Christians have enjoyed great freedom since the Iron Curtain collapsed, these laws are Russia’s most restrictive measures in post-Soviet history. The new laws contain several heavy restrictions on missionary activity and evangelism. The changes include laws against sharing your faith in homes, online, in writing, or any public space except a recognized church building.
As it now stands, Yarovaya requires missionaries to have permits, makes house churches illegal, and limits religious activity to the premises of registered church buildings. The rules are so tight that Christians in Russia cannot email their friends an invitation to church under the new surveillance and anti-terrorism laws. Anyone who disobeys could be fined up to $780 and organizations could be fined more than $15,000. Foreign visitors who violate the law can be detained and ultimately face deportation.
Russia’s Baptist Council of Churches wrote an open letter calling Yarovaya, “the most draconian anti-religion bill to be proposed in Russia since Nikita Khrushchev promised to eliminate Christianity in the Soviet Union.”
As fellow believers, we should all be appalled and upset with the Yarovaya laws. When religious freedom is swept away with the stroke of a pen, it affects the entire church. Now is the time for Christians across the globe to seek the Lord and pray that God will intercede for our brothers and sisters in Russia. Ask that God will unite Russian Christians and that this time of trial can be used to strengthen and grow the church.
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