Pure Church

All of the pastors I've met in South Africa thus far. But I especially appreciated this tid-bit from Grant Retief. Roughly quoted:

Gospel preaching is the first tier of AIDS ministry in South Africa--not orphan care or hospice. And that's because AIDS is the only epidemic known to man that can be controlled by behavior. If people have their sexual behavior brought under the Lordship of Christ, it could change the impact of AIDS radically.

South Africa has the highest AIDS rate in the world. In one area, the average age has been lowered due to AIDS-related deaths from 67 to 37 in just about 20 years! Nothing I can think of has been more devastating to a society. An entire generation of adults is vanishing from existence. And one presumes a great many of them are going to hell.

I'm sobered.

My wife sent me this link to a recent Salon article. In the article, an atheist father is troubled about how to convince his young evangelical daughter that he's not going to hell because he's not a Christian. The columnist, Gary Tennis, does a pretty interesting job using a football analogy to upend the atheist father's pride.