Maybe we need a Pandemic?

In his book,The Monkey and Fish, Dave Gibbons quotes a story about how Christianity grew in its early days. It is an interesting theory.

Historian Rodney Starks in his book, The Rise of Christianity, concluded that the surge in the growth of Christianity was rooted in the response of early Christians to a wave of great pandemics. At least two plagues wracked the developing world in the first three centuries after the death of Christ, and the Christians did something no one else would do. They stayed. They helped. And many gave their lives in doing so. In Starks book, Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria, described in a letter how believers responded to a deadly plague that killed an estimated five thousand people a day in the Roman Empire sometime around 260 AD: 

"Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead...The best of brothers lost their lives in this way."

Maybe it is time as the church to ask ourselves, "What are we doing that no one else will do?". Maybe it is time for me to ask myself that.

Comments

[Dana]

Thanks for posting, Mark! I really have to ask myself that!

P.S. Check out my blog! www.danacrow.blogspot.com

[Jong-Ik]

So you mean Jesus might actually have been serious about this whole "laying your life down for a friend" thing? It's not just a figure of speech? Is it not enough that I WOULD lay down my life for my friends, but now you're telling me that I actually HAVE TO? This "take up your cross" means actually picking it up? Instead of just staring at it and nodding our heads with each other and agreeing that Jesus stood for all the right things, we have to quit stalling ourselves from actually picking it up by rationalizing, theorizing, and occupying ourselves with other things?

Maybe Jesus cares more about me giving my life away rather than doing everything in my power to run myself insane trying to "make a success" out of myself, trying to become someone that others will look up to one day.

[Alexander Wilhelmsen]

I'll have my thoughts on the blog post itself, but for now, I'm aiming at Peter Chang:

Hey Pete, on part one, there are issues with your points there, and part of that problem is that you do have to live somehow and deal with other people and the things that come with them.

As for part two, I think that Jesus would be crazy about making a success out of me trying to be someone that others will look up to someday, and why not today? How'd you like to be like Paul (post-conversion) in someway? I'd say he was successful enough and he's someone to look up to.

Here's a past blog post where my comment is the last one where I want to be all that Mark wrote about, and it makes sense:
http://theflipsideblog.typepad.com/thejesterspub/2007/03/index.html

I want to be rich, famous, and looked up to in order to serve others, be a leader, and honor the God that gives me life. I will note though that I do want to be overlooked too. You can't look at Jesus if you're too busy looking at me.

"God, make me like Joe!" cries the repentant drunkard: http://www.dailywisdom.com/archives/old/1996/09/dw-09-16-96.html

That's my success... or so I hope it always will be. Success isn't a bad word, just as religion is not... the question is what does it mean and what is done with it.

[Alexander Wilhelmsen]

In America, one idea is to take from Near Eastern type people. It is interesting how open they are in terms of affections.

Both in real life experiences, a commentary that I remember from my "24" DVD watching days, and through how we hear about how customs were in Biblical times (and likely even today) where people are more openly neighborly and affectionate.

For those that have been over to Mexico, it's similar to that as well.

Thanks to a little link to a YouTube video (of a Conservative Radio Show Host known as "Mancow" from Chicago getting waterboarded), I went through Keith Olberman and listened to stuff said by Jesse Ventura (who's recently written a book) and one story he had from living in essentially a "middle of nowhere" in Mexico, atleast part-time, he told a story about a neighbor who had horses that his wife wanted to ride, and they offered to pay the neighbor (who lived about a mile down) to lease or borrow the horses, and Governor Ventura said that the neighbor told her that she could ride for nothing, as they are neighbors.

It's not so much something new that needs to be done, it's that something new to this part of the world needs to be done.

[Alexander Wilhelmsen]

By the way, if you've ever been to Mexico (Mark and I have via missions with youth), the people at the church that I served at when down there, the people didn't have that much of a church, but they were grateful and celebrated in a language I didn't understand, but also a language that I did understand without knowing their words.