To love and befriend the 'sinner' is a courageous walk!

Rather than burning atheists alive with fire, how about burning them with sacrificial love? Percy Bysshe Shelley Poems Queen Mab: Part VII. SPIRIT 'I was an infant when my mother went To see an atheist burned. She took me there. The dark-robed priests were met around the pile; The multitude was gazing silently; And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth; The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs; His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon; His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. "Weep not, child!" cried my mother, "for that man Has said, There is no God."' "Holiness is not a wall between us and the world" as Dr. James Russom says. To live a good Christian life there has been so much emphasis on the things we should not and no longer do and the places we no longer go, that we construct a wall and ask others to join us on our side of the wall of life. The courageous walk is up to the challenge to create a new understanding of "in the world, but not of it, removing the stigma or fear that if we fellowship with sinners we put our spiritual life at risk and become like the sinner. This might be true except that there is a difference between the fellowship with sinners (philadelphia = brotherly love) and koinonia (kindred fellowship) with Christians wherein we find accountability and commradery on the narrow way; yet we owe it to every man to extend brotherly love. We can only have koinonia with fellow believers. John the apostle would teach that the key lesson he felt Jesus wanted him to get across was "love one another!" The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners."' But wisdom is proved right by her actions" (Matthew 11:19). The Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples,"Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:29 - 32). There is Jesus praying for my effectiveness in the world and that of other Christians: we are salt, light, and the revelation of the Gospel, the representative of Jesus that reflects him to others. Show love. To people that do not know Christ, show them love. Let them see Christ in you. Ask questions. The only way you're ever going to find out about a person is by asking questions. Listen. Most everyone with holes in their lives are waiting for someone to just listen to them. Turn other toward Jesus. Let them know there is one who can wonderfully, beautifully change their lives. In His high priestly prayer, John 17, Jesus prayed: "I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. John 17:13-19 Lest they think this only applies to the original disciples; Jesus went on to pray: "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, John 17:20 Jesus prayed that as sanctified believers (holy and set apart to God) we would be used of God "in the world." Jesus demonstrated what He meant by that by his own life and ministry. Is there not a better way to get the point across to an atheist than to burn him alive with fire? Fire burns outside in, love burns inside out and renews and transforms in the process. Love is the way of a courageous walk.