When I say the word “Christian”, what comes to mind? For some, it may be church. Friends. Weirdos. Hurt. Pain. Judgment. A group of people you want nothing to do with. If you hate Christians, I get it. Some of the worst, meanest, most judgmental people I know call themselves a “Christian”. And this really sucks.
“For many in Western culture, spiritual maturity has been defined by how much you know about Scripture, about God, and about the Christian faith. Sadly, the people who claim to be the most mature Christians are often judgmental, divisive, and self-righteous. This isn’t maturity at all. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
Jesus had a very different end in mind for the spiritually mature. He didn’t define maturity by how much you know. He defined it by how much you love.”
(p. 59, “Didn’t See It Coming”, Casey Nieuwhof)
When I read this book, this quote DESTROYED me (also would HIGHLY recommend if you’re coming out of a hard season / are in a hard season of life. My brother recommended it to me after I left ministry vocationally / was feeling like a failure and it helped me a TON. If you want to pick it up, HERE’S THE LINK ON AMAZON). From about 17-20, I considered myself a VERY “spiritually mature Christian.” I “knew Scripture well.” I looked at sin and scoffed. I was thankful I wasn’t as “bad” as certain “sinners” that I knew. I thought I “knew more” and wasn’t wrong about ANY of my beliefs. As I left community college and went to Christian college / started taking some required Bible classes, I realized that maybe I was wrong about some (ok a SIGNIFICANT amount) of my beliefs, and that certain passages of Scripture aren’t as cut-and-dry as I once thought. I started to realize that my hatred of certain sins “worse” than my own weren’t worse, I was just trying to make myself feel better about my own idiocy / hypocrisy. In retrospect, from 17-20, I wasn’t good at being a Christian, I was actually pretty great at being an a-hole. (That said, if I hurt you in anyway during that time, I am so sorry. Genuinely. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I was not always great to people, and really did not reflect Jesus well. He is not like me—still now at times if I am being honest [I still can be a jerk sometimes], but ESPECIALLY then.)
The older I get, however, the more I see the importance of loving people well. At 14, I was a JERK. I thought the entire concept of God was a bunch of bull, but I went to youth group because people loved me well at church (and cute girls were there to be honest, sorry any of my old youth leaders reading this who thought I was just about to start bragging on you). When I finally realized who God was and what He meant to me in my life, I never repented because someone yelled at me—I did it because people loved me and invited me to a life of more.
As Christians, we are SUPPOSED to be defined by our love of others. Jesus said in John 13:35, “This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” Jesus also said that the greatest commandment is to “…’love The Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these” (Mark 12:28-31). As Christ-followers, we are supposed to be recognized by the love we have for God and others. Why in the world is it that we’re known more for generally being THE WORST then?
I am a firm believer that if you want to solve a problem, that problem starts with you. As for myself and my own life, I think that there are three internal problems I have to face in myself to love others better:
It’s Easier to Hate Than Love
Do you know what is something super fun that I love doing? Watching a terrible movie and making fun of it with friends. (Some of my “favorite bad movies” would include anything made by Neil Breen, The Room, Christian Mingle: The Movie [yes that is a real thing and stars Gretchen from Mean Girls and is just as wonderfully bad as you’re thinking it is], etc.) Hating on things can be fun, and it’s so, so, SO easy. It’s easy because our brain reacts more strongly to negative input and/or feelings, according to a study done by John Cacioppo, a doctor of psychology at Ohio State University. The reason? Our brains evolved to keep us out of harm’s way. “He showed people pictures known to arouse positive feelings (say, a Ferrari, or a pizza), those certain to stir up negative feelings (a mutilated face or dead cat) and those known to produce neutral feelings (a plate, a hair dryer). Meanwhile, he recorded electrical activity in the brain's cerebral cortex that reflects the magnitude of information processing taking place.
The brain, Cacioppo demonstrated, reacts more strongly to stimuli it deems negative. There is a greater surge in electrical activity. Thus, our attitudes are more heavily influenced by downbeat news than good news.” And the same goes for relationships as well. If you let your negative feelings overrun your positive ones for a person, it can devastate relationships. In marriages, researches found that “As long as there was five times as much positive feeling and interaction between husband and wife as there was negative, researchers found, the marriage was likely to be stable over time. In contrast, those couples who were heading for divorce were doing far too little on the positive side to compensate for the growing negativity between them.”
Although this research was for married couples, I believe you can apply this to all relationships. The more I allow negativity to grow between me and another person, it will destroy our relationship. The more I focus on “negativity” about that person (i.e. thinking their sin is worse than mine / how “terrible” they are), I will inevitably end up hating that person instead of loving them.
As a Christian, I have to make the continual conscious choice to love others, instead of focusing on their sin / “badness”. I have to continually chose to LOVE instead of hate. I have to love my neighbor as myself, REGARDLESS of who they are/what they do, and I’ll be honest, I cut myself a TON of slack at times when it comes to my own sin. Why not cut some slack for others (ESPECIALLY if they don’t follow the same “moral code” or guidelines that I do as a Christian)?
I Don’t Hate My Own Sin Enough
I think the advice of “love the sinner and hate the sin” is terrible advice. Because if I am hating the sin, guess who’s a sinner? THE PERSON! And EVERYONE(myself included)! And that means I will probably start to “hate” parts of a person / when they’re just being themselves around me (you know, a sinner, just like me)—and that doesn’t help show the love of Christ.
People are flawed. I am flawed. And yet, Jesus loves me, and invites me to more. Why don’t I start to focus on the POTENTIAL in people, and invite them into more? Why am I so focused on another person’s sin, when I have my own to deal with anyway? I’m not saying to turn a blind eye to sin if someone is a Christian, but I always want to make sure that my sin is dealt with before you I “deal with” someone else’s. (Kind of what Jesus says in Matthew 7:1-5. NOTE — this doesn’t mean I can’t LOVINGLY point out a brother or sister [IMPORTANT CAVEAT HERE] in Christ’s sin, I just need make sure I personally have dealt with this particular sin, and am pointing out their sin out of love for them instead of to be a grade-a-d-bag [this is a very loosely paraphrased version of Galatians 6:1-5].)
I need to love people, and HATE MY OWN sin. When I start to hate my own sin, I see my need for Christ, what Christ has done for me, and I can begin to see others not as “too broken” or “useless”, but rather in need of a Savior as much as me. When I am more focused on killing my own sin than the sin of others, it allows more space for love than judgment for a person.
I Think My Relationship with God is Perfect / I Let Legalism Lead Me
When I REALLY look at The Gospels, one thing is clear — Jesus never really yelled at anybody besides the overly-religious-types (aka The Pharisees and Sadducees). He continually hung out with sinners, but never sinned.
The Pharisees and Sadducees where EXTREMELY powerful during Jesus’ day, and were held to high esteem in social circles. Instead of using that power and social pull for the betterment of society / to do God’s work, they used it to become more powerful, make unnecessary rules around God’s rules, and look more “perfect” to people. And yet, they thought that their “relationship” with God was perfect. Jesus continually called them out, and didn’t pull any verbal punches (see Matthew 23 for more on this).
What sucks, is that I can be completely guilty of this, too. Maybe I’ll post things on social media to look like a “good Christian.” Maybe I’ll harshly judge and dismiss another Christian whose doctrine doesn’t completely align with mine. Maybe I think someone doesn’t love Jesus because “they [insert X here] sometimes”. Maybe I’ll catch myself not hanging out with nonchristians because they “sin too much”. Maybe I’m so caught up in my own arrogance that I think all other Christians (besides me of course) are idiots.
If any of the previous thoughts resonate with you, I want to challenge you to think on why. Spend some time this week thinking about it. Maybe it’s time to shift a paradigm or two. Maybe it’s time to be defined by love.
Ultimately, I think it’s more than past time for Christians to start loving people well. I’m so tired of having to apologize for the hurt certain “Christians” have caused. I’m so tired of seeing Christians in media portrayed in a negative light—because we have done it to ourselves. If we truly walked in grace and truth, I firmly believe that love is the only option.
Grace is weird. People are messy. Yet Jesus loves me, a broken, messy, much in need of grace (DAILY), person. Christians — let’s be more like Jesus, and be defined by our love of others. Let’s make life weird and messy this year, y’all.