{"id":1764,"date":"2006-11-14T22:31:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-15T04:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2012-05-15T16:34:37","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T22:34:37","slug":"christians-censoring-the-gospel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/christians-censoring-the-gospel\/","title":{"rendered":"Christians censoring the Gospel"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know if you should call it censoring or not, but Samaritan’s Purse has banned any religious materials from being included with their Operation Christmas Child<\/span>. project this year.
\nSeems a bit odd doesn’t it? A program run by Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, is removing any and all religious messages from shoeboxes destined for children around the world.
\nAccording to the Daily Mail<\/A> Samaritan’s Purse has banned any religious items from the boxes, including Bible stories, images of Jesus and any other religious items (though these don’t make the list of other banned items on their web site, which also includes war-related toys, chocolate or food, breakables, medicine and liquids).
\nSome are saying it’s political correctness to the extreme.
\nBut I say its sharing the Gospel in a tangeable way.Kevin at CMS says<\/A>:<\/p>\n

it’s part of making sure the message gets through. They need to respect local cultures where the boxes will be distributed–which are often primarily Muslim. Giving a Jesus doll to a Muslim boy could cause problems on the scale of a certain cartoon that caused worldwide riots. Samaritan’s Purse hopes the simple act of giving will speak for itself, followed up by the ongoing interaction with the organization. The idea is that there will be other, better avenues to spread its message, so they voluntariy opt not to put the message in the shoeboxes. Instead the shoebox itself is the message.
\nSo is it political correctness gone amuck? (Seriously? Since when was Franklin Graham politically correct?) Or is it a good example of carefully considering when and how to communicate the gospel?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this is a good reminder that sometimes people need their physical needs met before they’ll be willing to listen to you tell them about their spiritual needs.
\nAfter being in Nigeria for two weeks I can see both sides of it.
\nI can see people being turned off by anything that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Christian and thinking you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re shoving it down their throat.
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure its from previous experiences that led them to their decision.
\nI would hate to know a young child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s toys or whatever was taken away because their parents saw something about Jesus in it.
\nThe parents may be very strict and look at it as, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh here come the Christians trying to convert us again.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nWhen people see you genuinely care about them without always trying to convert them I think it means much more.
\nHow does this play into our daily lives?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know if you should call it censoring or not, but Samaritan’s Purse has banned any religious materials from being included with their Operation Christmas Child. project this year. Seems a bit odd doesn’t it? A program run by Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, is removing any and all religious messages from shoeboxes … Continue reading Christians censoring the Gospel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-ss","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}