This Can't Be Real......

So thanks to my parents I am now the proud owner of a Newsweek magazine pretty much every week. My parents have now forwarded their mail to me (kind of like a reversal of what I did to them while in college) and so I get the chance to check up on some news each week, for free! Well when I picked up the latest issue I was intriuged by a headline of “ Christian Hell House” because when I see a headline that mentions “Christian” and “Hell House”; ya gotta wonder! So I opened to the page listed and proceeded to read a very disturbing article about an “Evangelical” (I would use that word VERY loosely here) christian haunted house. These “hell houses” are stationed (apparently) across the country with the purpose of attracting people who wouldn’t normally go to a church but would go to a haunted house. While reading the article I can’t describe the disgust and the shock I felt as I read how these “Hell Houses” portray sins but with a grotesque twist. As I read the article, I literally began to cry; how can this be real? How can a pastor take the Good News (the true meaning of the word Evangelical!) and turn it into something so heinous? I just don’t understand. Today, the pastor of my church spoke about how Christians are messengers of the Good News and this cannot be the way! How can putting on a play that depicts a young boy reading “Harry Potter” who then turns into a school shooter be a way of showing Jesus? Or how does a woman who goes to a rave and then gets ganged-raped as her “consequence” for going to this party? (I won’t even start on how perverted and disrespectful are their multiple uses of the awful and violent act of rape.) The producers of a Brooklyn “Hell House” even stated that the pastor (original creator) and producers both “agree that probably no souls were saved in Brooklyn this October, but they both also see their collaboration as a success.” Their rationale for “success” was that they were able to give “New Yorkers an oppurtunity to meet Jesus and to get aquainted with the risks of sin.” At the end of the play “Jesus” invites them to repent and be saved, yet the stricken audience “when invited to join the Lord in prayer, all remain silent.” (Rightfully so) What a ludicrious and hurtful way to show people Jesus, this is not the Jesus that I know and who redeems me. The Jesus I know has taken my place and has sacrificed His life to save me. And with that redemption I have found a love from a Holy Father; a love that surpasses anything that I deserve. And it was not made real to me through a perverted display for shock value. It was/is shown to me by people who humbly lead a life that demonstrates God’s love and sacrifice of his own Son. It saddens me that people can now see a match of “Christian Values” and hate (which I feel is demonstrated in these “Hell Houses”). I want to be someone who preaches the Good News of Christ; first by my actions in love and in humility and second by my words which hopefully encourage and build others up. It saddens me that the world can now take this and use it as a reason not to know Christ and can throw it right in my face. How will I respond when that happens? I pray that I will respond with the love of the Lord and that I will seek their forgiveness for this heinous display. As for the creators of this display, I don’t even know what to pray; but I will still pray that the Lord will give me the right words.