PEA RIDGE — God has been using some guys like Andy Stanley and Reggie Joiner to help me think about how Christians often seem to respond to people. It seems that some of us who claim the name of Jesus appear to be angry a lot. Maybe part of it is amplified for me because it’s an election year. This seems to happen more when we find ourselves dealing with people who aren’t like us. You know, the people who don’t dress like us, vote like us, and, in big or small ways, disagree with us.
Sometimes they’re fellow Christians, but since we disagree on some issue we get angry (or at least that’s how we seem to act). Democrat Christians get mad at Republican Christians and vice versa (some of you will get stuck at this point, because you can’t quite imagine that you could be a part of one of those groups and be Christian).
Christians who come across as too legalistic get mad at Christians who come across as too grace oriented. Christians who are really mad about a particular sin get mad at Christians that don’t seem mad enough about the same sin. Christians who prefer a particular style of worship music get mad at Christians who prefer a different style. Sometimes the differences are small and sometimes they’re large.
Many of you could add several things to this list.
But it’s not just other Christians that we get mad at. We get really mad (or at least that’s how we seem to act) at people who aren’t like us in culture - people who don’t believe what we believe, people who haven’t embraced the Jesus that we have placed our faith in, people who don’t believe what we believe about the Bible, people who don’t live like Christians are supposed to live, even though they aren’t Christians, people who have a worldview different from ours,people who are impacting or leading our culture in a direction that concerns us, people who sin.
You see, my dilemma is that when I read the Gospel accounts and study the life of Jesus, I don’t see Him coming across as angry all that much. Well, OK, there was definitely a group of people to whom He demonstrated some anger. The Pharisees and religious leaders of His day were on the receiving end of Jesus’ anger more than once. The reality is that the group of people who were most like Jesus in theology and beliefs didn’t like being around Him. In contrast, the people that Jesus was least like, in beliefs, theology and lifestyle, liked being around Him. The people Jesus seems to accept and love the most weren’t really like Him. In fact He got in trouble for spending timewith people that were far from God. He even seems to like people that are far from God. What’s up with that? Why is that? Why does that seem to be so different from His followers today? Why don’t we have the same reputation that Jesus had when He walked on this world?
Is it just me, or do we Christians often come across to people around us as angry? What’s up with that? How do you feel and act toward people who aren’t like you? Do people who aren’t like you, like being around you? Being an angry Christian just seems like a really strange idea to reconcile with the Scripture. Think about it.
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Editor’s note: Al Fowler is the pastor of First Baptist Church, Pea Ridge. He can be contacted at 451-8192, or by e-mail at [email protected].
Church, Pages 2 on 05/23/2012