Many of us share the entire truth of the gospel, but the way we act around those with no home church, aren't Christians or are young Christians displays a false aura of perfection. We only let our sin nature show when we forget that people are watching us. I remember this intro from DC Talk's "What if I Stumble":
The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today
Is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips
Then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.
That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
There is an elder in my church that is also a dear friend, accountability partner, and counselor to me. He doesn't sound like an elder; he cusses when he's frustrated with the sin in his life, my life, or other's lives. When he was approached about this, his response blew me away - "If I think it, I'm going to say it. For me to suppress my anger and frustration with the [stuff] I see God's children going through is to put on this false mask that I am somehow sin-free. If people can't see the real me and only see good parts that I allow to be seen, I make Christianity look unattainable at best and hypocritical at worst. The unsaved must see that we struggle every day just like they do or we feed them something false."
I grew up in churches that had an unwritten expectation that anything more than the cursory sins everyone deals with shouldn't happen. So when those thoughts and feelings entered my mind, I suppressed them and never dealt with it. Leave sin alone long enough and it will spread like a cancer. If we create a culture that does not allow our brothers and sisters to come to us with anything knowing that they will be accepted in love, we are not loving the way Christ taught us to. The first step to creating a culture of acceptance is to use our own experiences and struggles to show people what Christianity really is... and what it isn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment