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“Lord, Save Us from Your Followers”
“It’s one thing to write a check to
your favorite charity; it’s one thing to speak in sympathetic terms about the
plight of those less fortunate; it’s one thing to hand out blankets to homeless
people; and it’s another to get down
on your hands and knees and lovingly wash the feet of a homeless person. To pour yourself into a simple act that says,
“I love you, you are special to me and to God.”” This is a small exert from a book by Dan
Merchant called, Lord Save Us from Your
Followers. In case you are like me
and have never heard anything about this man or his cause, I will give you a
short background lesson. Dan took two
years of his life traveling around the U.S.
trying to figure out “Why the Gospel of love is dividing America?” He went from wearing a bumper sticker suit in
the middle of Times Square to interviewing Sister Mary Timothy in San Francisco. To find out all the details of his amazing
adventure interviewing and conversing with big, and little, names throughout America, you
will have to read his book. But to find
out the bigger picture, all you will have to do is read the rest of this blog!
The whole point of the book is how
Christians seem to wean away from having actual conversations with
non-believers about their faith. A lot
of times, we would rather just shout the truth at them and call it a day. We would rather post a bumper sticker on our
car that says “WWJD?” or “Jesus Loves You”, than approach a random person in
the street and tell them these truths. We would rather condemn homosexuals and tell them what they are doing is
wrong, rather than sit down and have a conversation with them about the hurt
they have experienced and the struggles they deal with everyday. We would rather throw money at a homeless
person, than take them out for coffee and hear their story. We would rather write everyone who believes
different from us off as wrong, than to sit down and try to understand their
views and opinions. I know when I read
ALL of these statements; Dan wrote about, I was guilty of all them and more at
several points in my life. The way
Christians act now and have acted in the past doesn’t give us such a good
reputation. For a culture that is
supposed to love above all else, we sure do find lots of time to judge, and
very little, if at all, time to love. I
feel like Jesus made it so simple for us…“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved
you.” John 15:12 I know that we can never achieve the perfect
love that Christ has for us; I mean how many of us would take a bullet for
Osama bin Laden or the B.T.K. Killer? But we CAN love each other by selflessly
serving one another daily. By dying to
ourselves and our desires, we can start to conform to God’s will for our lives
helping people seek His kingdom. So by
taking time out of our busy, often self-centered, days to talk to others who
are different from us would speak volumes about the love of Christ.
I challenge you to seek out someone,
someone you would normally avoid at all costs, this week and engage them in a
conversation and just LISTEN. Show them
that you care enough about them to hear what they have to say and to be open to
their points of view whether it’s on religion, or their favorite brand of
cereal. There seems to be this unspoken
culture war…Christians vs. Everyone Else…I don’t believe that is how Christ
wants us to live, nor does He want the word “Christian” to have a negative
connotation attached to it. Making this
one small change would really help non-believers see us (Christians) in a new
light. We need to do our best to
represent Christ the way He really is and not how we want Him to be. If we, as Christians, become more aware at
how our actions affect the bigger picture of Christianity and people’s
perception of Christians, than we would hopefully choose to live more like
Jesus.
“Create in
me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Psalm
51:10
