It seems that followers of Christ are sometimes their own worst enemies. We take the Truth of the Gospel and then make it nothing more than religion- a list of do’s and dont’s that somehow will establish a connection with God. In the end religion is a dead end.
In his book The Reason for God, Timothy Keller writes: “Think of the people you consider fanatical. They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough.”
Not Christian enough? Consider this. Some of us focus almost exclusively on the Jesus of the New Testament who challenges the religious leaders of His day and who raised the bar on moral expectations. We focus on the Jesus who said that even looking at someone lustfully is an act of adultery.
Where is the Jesus who had compassion on people? What about the Jesus who healed the man who was paralyzed and then challenged the man to leave his life of sin or something worse would come upon him? Or the Jesus who rescued the woman caught in the act of adultery and then said for her to leave her life of sin.
We are not Christian enough when we fail to represent the whole life of Christ to the world around us. Ask Keller said, we can appear self-righteous and harsh instead of compassionate for the people we live and work with. I’ve been guilty of this in the past. Have you?
Paul wrote in Ephesians four that we should speak the Truth in Love. Jesus never winked at sin, but his mission was to restore the relationship between God and mankind and he did that by perfectly balancing Grace and Truth.
I like this one, Marty, thinking to myself in class Wednesday evening how, even in speaking of being a hypocrite or a fanatic, our mind is geared to think in terms of how we have found that true of others we have known within the church, but not ourselves. In truth, I had a woman come up to me once in the parking lot after a service apologizing for finding me in the past to be guilty in such terms. Even if she repented of such thoughts, though, she taught me that others do not always see us as we are, or at least as we see ourselves. I have found it to be a stumble, for us, in all things and, in all things, keep boiling it down to the reality of a risen Saviour within me. Not just a list of “thou shalt nots” and an agenda of “this is Christ”, but a daily cleansing at His oasis, an occasional boot in the butt to let me know I’m not there yet….