Did you know that when the general public is asked to describe Christians in one word, the top two responses are judgmental and hypocritical? This makes me soooooo very sad. I look around at the Christians that are in my life and I see love. Whether the love is shown by prayer, encouragement, accountability, or even just mowing someone's lawn during sickness, there has always been love. That's why it makes me so sad that the general public isn't seeing this for themselves. Don't get me wrong, there are Christians that are judgmental and are hypocritical, but that doesn't mean everyone is. The other day in the parking garage, I walked by a car that said, "God hates atheists." Seeing this literally pained me. Doesn't this person realize that they're sending the completely wrong message? Even if someone isn't an atheist, they see this sticker and the word hate just pops out. If they don't know Christ, this is going to steer them in the opposite direction. And honestly, if I weren't Christian and I saw that sticker, I would be assume bad things about Christians as well. The Christian faith isn't about hate, it's about love. I thought about just taking the sticker off but I didn't. I also thought about leaving a very respectful note on the car telling them that the sticker was awful, but I decided not to. I hate when I see violent groups on the news and they say that they were doing it for a reason having to do with religion or "because God told them do it because those people weren't Christians." I absolutely hate that people that don't know Christ, only know of Christians because of situations like this. In elementary school, I always hated when the whole class got in trouble because of one person; it was never fair. This is a similar situation. Christians as a whole get an awful name because of the ones in the group that don't live their life through love. Christians should want to show people how awesome it is to have this faith. We need to show them that our joy doesn't come from wordly things, it's comes from Christ that lives within us. We need to be drawing them near to us, not running them off. I don't even know if there is a solution to this problem except to urge people to act lovingly towards everyone they come in contact with. Maybe if we try to act as Christ tells us to, then the world will see us more than they see those violent groups killing people because they aren't Christian. I only hope that one day when people are asked to describe Christians they will use words like loving, forgiving, and altruistic. Hopefully that will happen one day.
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.
Psalm 62:5
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