Dear friends:
Perhaps you have often complained that church is full of hypocrites, so you don't want to go there.
Perhaps you have often complained that church is full of hypocrites, so you don't want to go there.
Indeed, human nature is a fallen nature. We are all prone to hypocrisy and serving ourselves most of times. Only when God intervenes our lives, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we find ourselves being changed. At the very least, the scales fall from our eyes and we can be honest with ourselves and confess our hypocrisy.
However, “The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” So be patient with Christians who are still under constructions since God hasn't finished His work with us yet.
A friend has just told me about this book "unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity and Why It Matters". it uncovered overwhelmingly negative views of evangelicals and born-again Christians, especially among young generations. In some ways these views are warranted, in some ways they are not, but Christians do well to take them as a wake-up call for the sake of those God wants to save and mature...w
...There may be a silver lining here. The charge of hypocrisy offers a handy starting point for turning around negative perceptions and explaining grace. Pastor and author Tim Keller admits that we Christians actually are often hypocritical and need to be humble about it. Unrepentant hypocrites don’t admit mistakes, so we immediately challenge a perception by owning up to it.
But the other unavoidable fact is that non-Christians assume we are trying to live like Jesus to get into heaven, like the good-works motivation of other religions and cults. So, when they find out we’re not perfect people, they critique us as hypocrites. In contrast, an old saying captures the biblical worldview: “The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” Unbelievers simply cannot understand this; we have to be patient with that, says Keller.
You could respond to the accusation of hypocrisy like this: “I have a relationship with Christ not because I’m good but precisely because I am not good. He rescued me from myself and the ruin I was causing. But He’s changing me. I’m still a mess, but I’m God’s mess.”
In an age of Internet image-making and advertising, young outsiders are cynical about finding anybody who’s genuine. Christians need to genuinely repent of hypocrisy. Meanwhile, we can explain that grace means our imperfections are covered by God during the process of spiritual transformation. Maybe outsiders will opt for grace once they see more of it.
(For the whole article, click the link below.)
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