I have struggled for years using a capital C in the word Christian. I guess my struggle stems from why we use a capital C. Presumably it is because the capital C stands for Christ, but so often christians do not.
The faces of christianity that are often seen by the world are self-righteous, judgmental, angry, and hateful. Jesus was none of those things. Christians will often site the scripture where Jesus got angry and drove the merchants out of the temple as an excuse for their own "righteous anger" towards sin over things that it is unlikely that Jesus is even angry about. When in fact Jesus' "righteous anger" is directed towards the very ones who are using His name to judge and be hateful.
I read a post the other day on Facebook that struck me odd. It took me a minute to figure out what bothered me but I finally did. The post was about an actor who basically cursed Jesus in front of the world at an awards ceremony. The writer of the post stated they were offended and called for christians to be angry and respond by not watching anything this actor was a part of. It went on to ask that the post be shared so more people could be angry. The more I thought about it the more I began to realize it was unlikely that Jesus was angry at this actor or the things they said and much more likely that He was sad. Not sad that the person hurt His feelings, but that they were hurting. And on another front Jesus is likely sad and hurt that the people who hurt this actor are people who claim to be for Jesus.
W.W.J.D, This was a popular movement around the turn of the century. And while asking what would Jesus do is a really good way of questioning our own actions, either most christians missed the point and just did what the wanted to do feeling justified that they wore a silly bracelet or they just really do not know Jesus well enough to answer the question. The call to boycott Disney, the call to boycott Starbucks, the movement to shame and condemn homosexuals, these are not the things Jesus would do they are the actions of self-righteous, judgmental, angry, and hateful people (or people blindly following those people). Jesus would not have turned his back on people because they believed differently. Jesus did not call people who were not following God out on their sin, he went to dinner with them. When Jesus met Zacchaeus he did not call him out on his immoral tax practices, He asked him to share a meal together, to spend time getting to know each other. Jesus did not need to get to know Zacchaeus, He knew him better than Zacchaeus knew himself. But Zacchaeus NEEDED to know Jesus!
I have often heard christians being critical of people do not appear to have need taking advantage of services and ministries offered by the church sometimes going as far as confronting them. If we look again at the example of Jesus with Zacchaeus maybe we would realize instead of judging them we should be getting to know them because God used the ministry to get them to a place where you could introduce them to Him.
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