Christianity a “Threat” to Primitive, Untouched People Group

Through satellite technology a totally primitive, untouched people group has recently been discovered in Brazil near the Peruvian border. A Brazilian government official said:

The main threats to the integrity of these groups are illegal fishing, hunting, logging, mining, agro-pastoralists with large clearings, missionary activities and frontier situations, such as drug trafficking.”

Wow!  God forbid these people become exposed to anything that might actually HELP them. Let them die of cancer. Let their children die of diseases that are easily treatable. Let them live in spiritual darkness, without hope.

In the past several centuries, the “integrity” of thousands of groups like this untouched group have been violated by Christian missionaries who have been the catalysts for all kinds of changes: improved living conditions, urgent medical care, literacy, hope, and even peace between warring villages/tribes. Call it an arrogant, superior complex. Call it Western snobbery. I call it loving people and helping them.

Pushing Your Kids Away from the Church and God

Sure, it’s self-serving to post this, but it’s definitely a pattern I’ve seen through the years:

. . . I once overheard a visitor to one of our services tell this story to a young father. He said, “This morning you brought your child to be given over to the Lord. I did that once too. But let me urge you from the bottom of my heart, don’t do to your child what I did to mine. As he grew up, he listened to me criticize the pastor year after year. As a consequence, I turned off my boy to the church and to ministers, and today he is far from God.”

– C. John Miller, Outgrowing the Ingrown Church, p. 34

(HT: Chris Brauns)

A Sign that Times are Tough

You know we are in a difficult economy when people are stealing toilet paper from public bathrooms: