. . .is that we rarely look/act like Christ*. (Nothing new here for some of you.)

Comments to the reluctant blogger’s political frustrations don’t surprise me. They do, however, bum me out. One commenter expressed her step away from Christianity primarily because of her negative perceptions of what Christians (or those who claim to be Christians) seem to be about.

Unfortunately, I’m sure that happens a lot.

It’s weird though. If you look at the source of this faith – that is, Jesus – you see that he had the same problem with religious people of his day. They followed all sorts of rules and tried to look righteous, but their hearts were as cold as ice.

Often times, we Christians don’t reflect what Christ was all about (myself included). Scot McKnight summarizes what Jesus was all about in his book, The Jesus Creed. He offers four memorable words as this creed: loving God, loving others. Amazingly simple, yet amazingly difficult.

And, many of us forget the second part of that little ditty. Christ was all about us loving others.

If we were to put that to work in everything we did, we’d have a much different reputation in the world. How do I know? Rewind a couple thousand years to the beginnings of the Christian church and you’ll discover that a great deal of the church growth in the first few hundred years had to do with just that – Christians loving others with reckless abandon.

If we want a better reputation in the world, if we want to impact this world, we’ve got to start showing some serious love.
–
* My apologies to those of you already rocking the world with love – I know you’ll take this in the right spirit. (For non-native English speakers, “rocking the world” is a good thing.)

2 Comments »