Self Preservation

Why are christians SOOO worried about self preserving "the faith"!!! There has barely been a sunday service that hasn't gone by, with any of the churches I have been with, were the conversation comes up about how we as christians need to stick to our guns (so to speak) and that the world is going to get worse before it gets better (very Gnostic/Platonic thinking and not Jewish thinking). The world has always seem to get worse before it has gotten better. Think back to when Maritn Luther wrote his 95 Theses, I am sure that to some extent that Martin Luther thought that the world was getting worse. That the faith at that time was being challenged (he did a ton of the challenging), and that those who professed the true faith should stick together. 

I bring this up because I have been reading Isaiah again...I love this book (it's long though ;-). The first few chapters have nothing to do with the world and everything to do with those that claim allegiance to God. Now God does say to turn back to him and as Is 1:16-17 says, "Wash yourselves and be clean! Let me no longer see your evil deeds. Give up your wicked ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. help the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Fight for the rights of widows." Now this can be taken literally or figuratively. Literally: obvious; figuratively: those that are below lower class, those are who we are supposed to defend and stand up for. 

Now you are asking, "what does this have to do with Self Preservation?" Preservation comes from an old french/latin word: praeservatio which means to keep. So when you add self to the word, you could read it as to keep myself, or ourself. This is SO easy to do. But Isaiah over and over again is concerned with Self Preservation and why the nations of Israel and Judah are concerned with ways other than what the kingdom of God should be truly worried about. 

You know Peter was worried that his world was going to go to crap. He was going to lose his life. To me, if someone told me that I was going to lose my life, I would concede to the fact that my world was going to go to crap. John (whom Jesus loved) was going to live a nice long life. Peter of coursed perturbed by the fact that HE was going to die spoke up, but Jesus let him know that it wasn't for him to care about. Peter's preservation was nothing in comparison to following Christ. 

So I say to you and myself...be mindful of a self preserving mindset and continue to ask yourself as I ask myself; what concerns God is not me and me alone but all he has created. The entire Cosmos that God has spoken into existence and is sustaining is my business.