That word has been made toxic by the religious right. All election you have hear the media say how the evangelicals were supporting Trump. I can’t tell you as a born again evangelical Christian how angry this made me.
Evangelical comes from the Greek word euangelion. That means good angel or good messenger. It is the description of someone who bears good news. The good news is that we are loved. That we have a God who loves us and is reaching out to us. A God who gave His life for us. A God who, if we believe in Him and come back to Him, will cleanse us of our sins and that you can have eternal life. This eternal life is not just after you die but here and now. It is a transformative love unlike anyone can imagine.
But do the religious right talk about this? No, it is only about a personal relationship, blind obedience, and a get out of Hell free card. Don’t get me wrong personal salvation and a personal relationship is important. That is what radically changes your life. But it isn’t not about blind obedience. God doesn’t want people who do His will out of fear. No, He wants love. And when we love Him, we want to be better people. We want to follow him because we don’t want to let Him down.
I am sick when “evangelicals” get out of their ivory tower to talk to the unsaved, they always mention how the person that they are trying to convert is a terrible sinner and must repent and come to God. They don’t talk about love. They don’t talk about justice. They talk about Hell and the reward of heaven. If that was all Christianity was about, I would still be an agnostic.
They push people away. They force feed it. If you try to feed something to someone who doesn’t want it at that time they will spit it up and forever be resistant. I don’t want to be flippant but sharing the Gospel is like talking about a great film like Star Wars. You describe the adventure, the special effects, the characters but they are the ones that have to buy the ticket.
I talk about justice. I talk about love. I talk about how with the Holy Spirit, the abolitionists helped end slavery. I tell them about the prophets and how they stood up to the corrupt powers of the day. I talk about Jesus’ teachings and how we truly can’t live them out without the Holy Spirit. But most of all I talk about how when you have faith, you feel the love of God. But I don’t tell them about the punishments of Hell or the rewards of Heaven. I tell them about the upcoming Kingdom. A Kingdom without hate, without war, and most of all without hypocrites.
So I am talking back the word evangelical but I will give them a word in return. That word is apostate. Apostate comes from the Greek word apostasia. That means revolt or falling away. That is one of the main reasons for this blog to show that these “evangelicals” are nothing of the sort. They are the ones described in
2 Timothy 3 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
But I am an evangelical Christian. So I do believe in the good news of God that one day there will be a kingdom where there will be no apostates. There will be no Trump.
2timothytrump 
1 Comment