A guy I know came to church.
This guy believes in Christ. He is a stand up guy, a great husband and a great father. If I was marooned on a desert island and could pick one man to be with me, it would be him. He just doesn’t attend church. This is probably because of experiences that he has had with toxic christians over the years. I have been trying for about 10 years to get him to start bringing his family to our church, which is a really great one.
One day, he told me he’d be coming to church on Sunday. I said a prayer of thanks and was there to meet him. He brought his daughter. He showed up on a really cold day wearing his warmest jacket…..a black leather “motorcycle jacket”. As he was walking in, he was feeding his daughter a hard boiled egg. She doesn’t eat well and he feeds her protein whenever and wherever he can. He doesn’t sleep well and he probably looked a little rough.
As he walked in, his first encounter was with another man. This man gave him the “look”. The look said, “you are no good and you don’t belong here”. In 10 seconds that “Christian” undid 10 years of my work.
We often pass judgement on people based on incomplete or even bad information. We must realize that there are things going on in the other guy’s life that we know nothing about. This isn’t just sometimes true…….it is always true.
The moral is this. We all need to operate based on a simple rule that I have tried to follow for most of my life (not always successfully).
NEVER ALLOW YOURSELF THE LUXURY OF BELIEVING THAT YOU ARE, IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY, BETTER THAN THE OTHER GUY……….. BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT.
There is no more effective way to undo God’s work in this world than to pass judgement on the other guy.
There is no more effective way to promote God’s work in this world than to love the people that you meet……right where they are…….no matter what.