1968, Protesters and the Gospel

On Saturday, Hayley was at the baby shower of a good friend (who is shooting for number four! I always get worried when the kids outnumber the parents) and that left a bunch of us men with a bunch of kids. Four of us blokes and seven kids all under the age of five to be precise. Potential chaos. The only thing that saved us was our “she’ll be right mate” attitude to looking after kids. It was actually kind of funny to watch. But what makes this blog worthy is that it produced the best gospel chat I’ve heard all year.

We were talking about the riots in Paris and it reminded Doug of a book he had about all the revolutions and uprisings in 1968 – as it turns out there were heaps. As he was paging thru the book giving us a run down Thomas, his four year old son asked,

“What’s a protester?”

“Well, a protester is someone who doesn’t like the way things are and wants to change them. The world isn’t the way it should be is it? What made it so bad?”

“Sin” Thomas replied.

“Spot on! But throwing rocks at police can’t solve that problem can it? How does God deal with sin?”

Thomas and his older brother James had a few shots at this one – Jesus coming back, God killing Satan, but eventually decided that it was when Jesus died on the cross.

Doug concluded with something like, “So you see protesting can’t solve the real problem of sin in this world, only Jesus could do that when he died on the cross for us.”

I sat back amazed. It wasn’t planned; Doug was just shooting from the hip. But what I witnessed in those few minutes was a brilliant gospel explanation. Not in a fake vacuum but in relation to social action, political ambition and the real state of mankind. Wow. It was the best gospel chat I’ve had all year.

Scott