SO then, because you are lukewarm,and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth… New King James Version How easy to be lukewarm or mellow! We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, step on another’s toes! We want to be liked by the community around, and will do anything to see we don’t stand out.
If there are people who stand up for issues, the mellow circle people brand them as ‘activists’!A Father Stan can go to jail, a Teesta Setalvad can fight against injustice but these lukewarm people smile and don’t get involved. And what do the scriptures say about such people, ‘So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth…” says God. Vomit is a strong word. A word associated with an extreme action of disgust. God does not talk about a dialogue with you here, about making you hot, but His disdain is in the word ‘vomit’! I just saw announcements of a bishop in Madhya Pradesh, being caught by the EOW with 3 crores cash on him. This has even got the chief minister and rest of the country riled. The bishop is the president of the BSI, on which national board I sat till last year.
On one occasion I found a member was being sent to the annual conference every year, and not just for two years as was stipulated by the rules. I enquired and found that to circumvent the rules he went one year as a lay person and after two years as a priest. I protested and got the fraud stopped. Later, as we sat for lunch the presiding bishop spoke of priests who were stealing church money. I remember smiling and telling him, ‘Bishop when you can preside over a meeting and allow the stealing of truth as you nearly did, can you blame your men for taking matters further and stealing money?”
A ‘lukewarm’ leader begins the journey of a thief. It takes guts and courage to be a firebrand, and yet that is the kind of people God wants all of us to be. In the scriptures even as the Israelites were getting their promised land, God still allowed certain foreign tribes to continue staying, and I quote from Judges 3 vs 2: ‘The only reason the Lord left those nations in the land was to teach the descendants of the Israelites who had not fought in wars how to fight in future.’
Till date deserters in the army are shot, and the nearest action close for this mellow group or circle who don’t want to ruffle the feathers of a community around them with the gospel truth, is being ‘spat out’ from the mouth of God. But, on a positive note, God will fight our wars for us, when we stop being mellow and become His courageous fellow..!
