Mal Fletcher looks at where our passion is directed

Many of us have been going around trying so hard not to step on anyone else's toes, to the point of confusing political correctness with truth.

The popular thinking has gone thus: "It's OK to believe that something is true, as long as you don't insist that it is the truth of the matter."

Yet, at least for a while after 9/11, people seemed less willing to call everything "negotiable". Some things, it seems, clearly are wrong and evil.

Some things are true and worth being passionate about.

For Christians, there should be at least one major lesson learned from September 11. We can no longer afford to present a "business-as-usual", "more-of-the-same" face to the world.

We must meet people with a zeal for our God that is greater than their passion for their gods - whatever they may be.

For the church, if for no other group, September 11 surely represented the death of blandness and a call to passion!

Until now, secular prophets have preached "blessed are the comfortable", while some churches have responded with "comfortable are the blessed". The church needs a revival of passionate living and leadership.

Check the scriptures: the God who called us is a passionate God. He is anything but the clinical, emotionless - yes, even "nice" - figure the church has sometimes represented him to be. He is a zealous God.

When the Israelites suffered under Pharaoh, they could not have understood why God was allowing the king's heart to be continually hardened. Each hardening brought on their heads even greater misery.

Every plague God sent on Egypt was also a direct challenge to a particular Egyptian deity.

Why frogs and locusts? Because both had a part in the religion of Egypt.

God was not only displaying his authority over Pharaoh, but over every false god the Egyptians had conceived.

They could not have seen it at the time, but later, in all the challenging days of the exodus and conquest, the Israelites could look back and be assured of the greatness of their God. Theirs was a God who demonstrated his right to receive worship - and he did it in such a "watch this" kind of way!