Thursday, March 24, 2011

Are Christians a minority in the church?

 This is one of the saddest quotes I have ever read! Why is this sad? The biggest thing is that it is so often true. 
Ghandi had studied all religions and all philosophies. He was officially Hindu but considered himself a member of all major religions. He knew the Bible and knew the philosophy given to us by Jesus Christ. And this was his response.
The word Christian means 'follower of Christ', or even 'little Christ'. How can we take on this name if we are not like Christ? This is one of the biggest difficulties the world has with Christianity; the fact that Christians are supposed to represent Christ and yet they are judgmental, cheap, prideful, and often copy the ways of the world rather than the ways of Christ.
When Jesus met the sinner he made a clear distinction between sin and sinner. He made a clear distinction between the immoral action and the person acting. One of the best examples of this is in John chapter 8. This is the popular passage in which the Pharisees present a woman, who was caught in the act of adultery, to Jesus. The pharisees want to stone her according to the law, but Jesus' response is of course:
"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
The pharisees then all drop there stones and leave one by one. After they are all gone Jesus speaks to the woman:
"Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you? (...) Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” 

Jesus was very clear: 'You sinned, and what you did was wrong. Don't do it again, but I do not condemn you.' 

Today Christians seem to go to one of two extremes. If this case were presented to the church today there would be two main responses. One side would respond exactly like the pharisees: "Let's grab our stones and stone her!" The other side would say: "Oh that's okay. God knows it's hard to resist having sex with multiple people. When He said "Don't commit adultery" it was really just a guideline, but He knows we can't really follow that. So go ahead and keep doing what you're doing."


We may not be saying these words exactly but these are the messages convey. Neither of them match with Jesus. This is the reason people look at the church like Gahndi did. They see how Jesus had a great philosophy and great commands, but they don't see us following them. Many people probably have the attitude of: "If His own followers don't do what He says then why should I?"


It is time for the church to be filled with Christians, with followers of Christ! Because so far Christians have seemed to be a minority in our church and that is sad!

3 comments:

  1. Hey just saw you on BlogCatalog

    Unfortunately there will always be the tares along with the wheat, the true convert and the false convert.

    The thing about the tares is that they are virtually identical to wheat and cannot be removed until the harvest. However, While waiting and working for the harvest we must be able to discern the fruits that are being produced.

    We all need pruning and for those that are within the church it must be done in love but not at the expense of the truth

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  2. This is a really good article!
    I was once reminded that we should all use the Bible as a mirror instead of a weapon. I love thinking like that, because it makes me work on myself - striving to be a better discple of Christ - instead of judging and comparing myself to others.
    Colossians 3:1-17 is a great part of scripture :)

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  3. Thank you for your comments! It's true that there will always be tares but I think sometimes we are tares simply out of complacency, not realizing it. One of the jobs of ministers is bring this to their realization.

    That's a great metaphor healingleaf! We must look at ourselves first just like Jesus said, often we are the ones with a plank in our eye.

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