M.A.D.

            Last spring, Kendra and I visited the Titan Missile Museum near Tucson, Arizona.   It was a fascinating tour and I recommend it if you are in the area.  The Titan nuclear missiles were developed as a deterrent in the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the middle to late decades of the 20th century.  Both sides amassed nuclear devices capable of reaching each other’s country in an effort to keep each other from launching a preemptive strike.  The ideology became known by an acronym: M.A.D..  The letters stood for Mutually Assured Destruction.  The idea was aggressively destructive but simple: “If you launch your nuclear missiles, I’ll launch mine and we will both be annihilated.”  There would be no winners in this kind of war -- only losers.

            As the tour guide talked about M.A.D., I thought about some verses in the Bible (I know….it's weird; but preachers do this sort of thing.  It’s a blessing and a curse….).  The apostle Paul devotes the first four chapters in his letter to the Galatian churches to warning them about being pulled back into the bondage of adherence to certain parts of the Old Law for salvation.  Christ has set us free from that kind of bondage.  But in chapter five, he addresses an opposite but equally dangerous problem -- the abuse of the freedom we have in Christ.  Listen again to what he says:  “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”  But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:13-15).

            When believers choose to live in ways that result in biting and devouring fellow Christians, the result is mutually assured destruction.  As Paul says, we will be “...consumed by one another.”  A local church can become a nuclear wasteland.  No winners -- only losers.

 

God loves you!

Mike