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Christians and Christian Churches Need to Stop Judgment, Start Loving
By Julie | April 14, 2008
Marc and I have been reading the book UnChristian. The book reflects a recent study done by the Barna Group showing how unfavorable non-Christians view Christians. Of course, you don’t need to read a book to know this, but here a list of qualities non-Christians (and some Christians) have attributed to Christianity: judgmental, antihomosexual, hypocritical, too political and sheltered. In the study they researched exactly why we are viewed this way and found it’s not just the media causing these statistics, but often times real life encounters with the church, and the people in them. Marc plans to write more on the book when we get finished with it. But today, reading this brought back a difficult experience I had with my own church years ago:
We had a wonderful pastor in the church I grew up in. I loved him and his family. The church had a Wednesday night Bible study. My brothers and I were too young to drive. My mom had a business, and Wednesday nights were incredibly late nights for her and her employees. Some nights she didn’t get to the house until after midnight. So, she wasn’t able to drive us to Bible study. This also meant several of her employees’ kids weren’t able to go as well. One day our minister knocked on the door to invite us to the bible study. Mom explained how busy she is on those nights. He said, “No problem, but if you’d let me, I’ll pick up the kids and drop them off.”
For the next few years, every Wednesday night we were picked up in the pastor’s station wagon, with a few of our friends, and taken to church. Then our pastor held an adult Bible study, his wife had a kids’ Bible study. When it was over our pastor took us all home. I looked forward to it every week. Our pastor made us laugh in the car, sometimes we’d have mini-Bible lessons, but in real life ways. His wife had us laugh, and sing, and think about God. We felt so loved by them. It was like they didn’t notice we were kids, they treated us as equals. Through them, in those years, I really learned to love God, and church people. Other people loved them as well, and we saw a surge of growth in our church, an amazing accomplishment because it was a country church; the nearest towns had only a four or five hundred people in them.
A few years later our pastor decided to take a new ministry job in a town hours away. I was so sad to see them go; over the years I still miss them. Our church didn’t have a minister lined up after their departure. For weeks church consisted of guest speakers who volunteered to come in and talk about God, some were pastors, some were just fellow Christians. A few months later we got a “real” (read: ordained) minister to call our own. But his sermons were different, and sometimes cruel. Soon little scandals happened, and people began leaving. One Sunday school teacher was told she could not teach because the minister found out she had gotten pregnant, out of wedlock, when she was in high school. The minister didn’t care that this had happened years earlier, or that she was married to the father of her child. Many people were upset. This one action eventually got the minister removed from our church, but not before he did a lot of other damage.
During this time my sister and I were in a car wreck because of an icy road, on a snowy day. My sister was paralyzed from the waist down; she has not walked since. She was taken six hours away to a hospital in Omaha. A few days later, when the storm and roads had been cleared, my siblings and I all went to the hospital to see her. She had just come out of an eight-hour surgery, after which we were told her spine was crushed too badly for her to ever walk again. Our new minister, who had befriended my brother, hitched a ride to the hospital with him. We thought he had come to offer some comfort. Not so much. He cornered Mom and informed her this terrible thing had happened because “she wasn’t living right with God.” That really hurt, especially because he had hardly taken the time to even talk to my Mom before this event, so any reason he had to say something so cruel came from other people, or his own personal prejudices. Why? Maybe because after twenty-five years of marriage, she was a single Mom? Maybe because she worked a lot? (She had a business to run because she was caring for kids on her own.) That’s my speculation; I don’t know why he said it. I don’t think we ever went back to that church, even though I’d loved it for years. That minister killed the momentum the pastor I loved had started, many people who had attended for years found other churches.
If it hadn’t been for three things, after our minister’s remarks, I probably wouldn’t be a believer today.
1.) I already knew, and loved God personally.
2.) I had witnessed, loved, and been loved by true Christians. I knew how kind many of them were. So, I knew our new minister didn’t represent the majority.
3.) After my sister’s paralysis, I was going through one of the hardest struggles of my life. I prayed every day God would get my through it, that he’d guide my sister and give her strength and happiness. Then, I watched as she touched many lives around her by the example she lived (she still does) and I could see the handprints of God, even in our suffering. God was so good, and kind during that time, even if some people were not.
We have to be so careful as Christians. People are hurting, and they have been hurt by the church or by Christians. We are living in a society that has gotten tired of us, and some of it is our fault. I like this example in my life though, for me, it proves a true Christian’s good qualities will have a stronger impact then the judgments we get from those who “play” Christian. But maybe a lot of people aren’t seeing good qualities. I hope that’s not true, because if it is, we are forgetting so much of what we’re called to do, and be.
Topics: Encouragement, Faith, Life and Living | No Comments »
