Sadly, being Christian doesn’t make us any less “human” (and therefore flawed and apt to sin) than the next guy. Accepting Christ into our lives gives us grace, mercy and a direct line to the Throne, but it doesn’t keep us from acting like jerks sometimes.
Many more times than I would like to remember I’ve seen Christians attacking other Christians over things like doctrine, or music, or sin. Sometimes I think people forget the whole “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” passage in the Bible. I’ve heard us called hypocrites so many times because of that very thing and it hurts every time. I try to remind myself every single day that I’m as far from perfect as it gets, but sometimes I even catch myself thinking or saying something negative about another Christian, usually in response to hearing them do the exact same thing! I quit trying to use the “I’m just responding to the attack” argument with God a long time ago because regardless of the why behind it, we should be sticking together, not sticking it to each other!
That is the main reason that the Beyond the Mountain festival excites me so much. Sure, there is going to be great music, but there’s an even bigger picture here … A whole bunch of Christians are getting beyond their worldly differences to come together and make something positive happen. The organizers of the festival are not worried about race, denomination or nationality. They’re bringing together a bunch of great musicians (who also don’t care about race, denomination or nationality) to do something positive and one of the end results will be help for a church in need!
Maybe you remember what happened with The Revolution Metal Festival last year in Mexico. In case you don’t here’s a brief synopsis - The members of a small underground outreach church in Mexico spent months planning a festival to bring Christ to the folks in Mexico that didn’t know Him. These weren’t rich people and putting together the money to sponsor a festival meant that the majority of them ended up selling off personal possessions (like cars and TVs – and other things that we take for granted) in order to raise the funds. Stryper was contacted to headline the show and they accepted the invitation as well as over $56K in up-front money to do it. In the end, they cancelled their appearance and kept the money. The reasons were all legal and this isn’t about trashing Stryper – but the bottom line is that the church in Mexico couldn’t afford to lose that money. The other bands involved in the festival donated money and helped get the word out, raising a total of $11, 371.63 as of today (4/30/05). Stryper even sent the proceeds from T-shirt sales they had specifically for the Mexico church. But let’s face it, when you’re down by $56K, while $11K is a lot of money, it’s only a drop in the bucket. The church in Mexico was hurting --- bad --- and it looked like only a miracle would help these people.
