Practical Christian Living

A man was recently asked to leave an overbooked airplane recently. (Overbooking an airplane is an infuriating practice.)

He refused and when the officers tried to force him to leave he threw a tantrum. The result was that he WAS ejected after being beat up. (He settled with the airline and got money from the reaction to his rebellion.)

I don’t think he should have been beaten up but I’ve been thinking about all this.

I remember being in college as an 18 year old and some professor posing a question to us. It had to do with deciding who to throw overboard to drown if we were in an overloaded life raft. This was my first exposure to what we were told was called "situational ethics." I loved it because I was young then and the implication was that older people should be thrown overboard since we younger people had our lives ahead of us. I knew it was wrong but it appealed to my selfishness....so, I liked it. Our society has experienced 45 years of conditioning now in which situational ethics has saturated us. Absolute standards (as in God's Word) have been abandoned at the altar of selfishness. That guy threw a tantrum because he wasn't getting his way. Situational ethics called for him always getting what he wanted because, from his viewpoint, that was his right. No one else get up and left the plane because everyone else wanted their own way too. (Situational ethics.) The airline had him ejected because that's what it wanted and situational ethics called for the people who ARE an airline to always get their way for their own convenience. I think I would have gotten up from my seat, called my wife to tell her I would be on a later flight and left the plane. Why? Because the standard of sound words (2 Timothy 1:13), the Bible...God's Word...says that we are to consider the needs of others to be more important than ourselves. "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others." (Philippians 2:3-4) Moral of the story: the devil will serve up all sorts of satanic ideas....like situational ethics. We MUST be wise as a people and reject ideas that go against the principles in God's Word (and we won't be able to do that if we don't read it.) If we don't reject these ideas they can easily become part of the fabric of our lives as time goes on.

Humanity is on a downhill slide as people reject God’s Word and the principles therein.

We can share God’s Word but we cannot force the world to obey it.

What we CAN do is read it for ourselves, learn how God would have us conduct ourselves and LIVE IT in humble, yet practical and evident ways.

Perhaps someone will become intrigued and be drawn to the Lord through seeing how different we are because our lives will be in such contrast to the declining humanity around us.

“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.” (Ephesians 4:17-19)

Perhaps someone will be saved, having observed by our conduct that we have been with Jesus.

Could happen!

At any rate, if we choose to live in obedience to God’s Word, WE will benefit from living in a practical Christian manner.

Pastor Mike McInerney

Mike McInerney Ministries

Decatur, Texas

© April 12, 2017

(For use with permission)