The Strange Meanness of Christians

 The Strange Meanness of Christians

Some Christians have a certain callousness. We ignore people for years in our congregations, where Worldlings would find out who everybody is, so long as the group is small enough to feasably meet them all.

Some Christians have a certain sensitivity. The World pushes forward a surface politeness as a first layer of protection in their evil environs, and are more straightforward with trusted company, which we all do, sometimes for good reason. But Christians often weigh the surface politeness far greater and demand it more often. Even the Worldling in a responsible career might relax such things after hours with mere acquaintances, but we Christians often hold out until we get with close friends and family, and then, probably, only because we cannot keep up the charade all the time. I think that we rely on politeness as though it were kindness as an excuse to cover our sin. But God's Word tells us to openly proclaim our sins to each other. That doesn't mean that we should revel in them, by any means, but, in these real-life, everyday cases where we've been struggling with something for some time, we really must admit it. The World admits some things to each other in those more intimate settings, even though it attempts to cover most sins. To the World, exposing sin is very rude and it often seems dangerous to them, but we are supposed to confess our faults to each other.

We're sensitive, and we're callous, and we're mean in ways that the World has gotten past, because they are busy being more deeply evil than we are on the whole, but our surface level stiffness causes us to hold each other to the same false behavior out of fear that we'll be judged by each other, and this from people who so often falsely believe that Jesus commanded us not to judge each other, when He told us to "practice righteous judgment" (John 7:24b).

We must help each other by considering God first. We should ask everybody at church whether they are Christians. I see that this is a difficult matter, which is all the more evidence that it should be done. Nobody who names the name of Christ should be accepted without first publicly proclaiming their acceptance of the full doctrine of salvation, including verbally confessing "Master Jesus", just like the Bible says, so we may hear them call on the name of the Lord for salvation, because it's with the mouth that confession is made to salvation. If they don't believe Jesus was buried, then they're not Christians, along with the other three tenets, remembering that no first century Jew would have understood the meaning of the term "resurrection" apart from the raising back to life of a flesh and blood body. Jesus' death wasn't just "on a cross", as I've heard some Christians strangely change it to, but the salient matter, that He died "for our sins", and all that implies, in accordance with all the prophecies about it that were made beforehand and all the descriptions of it that were made afterward. His subsequent witness by a list of His own people is necessary for salvation, just like the Bible says.

After we know who we are and why we are who we are, we can begin to deal with each other on an equal footing. When we know that we are all still sinners, we can try to reclaim some of the openness that the World hasn't had any reason to lose, and which they hold onto as part of their surface coherence. They've been tutored in being one people with each other and in looking past each others' faults, which suits those who hide sin, now in 2023 for many years. We've looked past each others' faults, because we've misinterpreted their lessons which we've overheard or learned out there before we became Christians. We think that we could handle talk about sin, but that such talk drives away prospective new converts, which is an excuse to keep from digging deeper to help each other.

We must help each other by doing what God's Word tells us to do with each other, and there are several things that we don't practice, strangely. We practice weird, stifling versions of the World's lessons, but we don't even talk much in many congregations about how the church should treat each other. I think that in the past, when segments of Christ's Church have talked about them, questions arose which couldn't be answered, and so it was dropped for that generation. Answers exist, though. We really should shun each other, according to the Scriptures. We could build a coherent picture from gentle reproof through witnessed warnings to ejection from our company for unrepentant sin. We could also care for the daily needs of the widow who is known among us for good works and do other such things in accordance with the logic of love as it's applied to real life, after we've given up our pretenses.

We must treat each other as poorly or as well-behaved as we treat our physical families. We must know that the unsaved mother is our God's enemy, and when we give her a cold drink of water in Jesus' name, we pour hot coals over her head, and yet we do it, because she really is our enemy. We practice longsuffering, not to ignore but to tolerate suffering, which should not come from each other for long periods of time, but we deal with sin amongst ourselves. We should stop dealing with the World's sin. If our children are being exposed to bad sex in school, we should wonder what motivates us to send them there. We aren't under written laws, not even the good advice about how to treat each other, so let's think long and hard about using the World's laws as excuses to do the easy thing and to bow to the pressure of the World to sacrifice our sons and our daughters to the wily wickedness of the devil, especially when it's possible to avoid that altogether. We pray for each other, but only if we are certain that God will give us the good thing we ask for, on behalf of the other as on our own behalf, because we follow God's Word and dont' pray for ourselves without trusting God to give us good things, according to His perception and will, to His glory and our great gladness. Amen? Aaaaaaaaaameeeen!

After this, we can build societies and structures and businesses and governments and help each other by making a refuge - there's nothing stopping us - just as the World has it's own protections. We do have groups that watch for us, even on a worldwide scale. We need to see our local congregations as self-supporting, not in any weird way, but from the heart first, so that we can pool our talents when it's needed, and so we can know the needs of even the ones who slip in at the back. Why aren't we aware of their status concerning salvation; why aren't we honoring the humble ones; why aren't we working out the things the Lord has worked in. We try to express ourselves in limited ways to Worldlings in hope that they will see our kindness and ask about what makes us that way in order that we could gain an opportunity to tell them about our good Master, but we could do so much more by expressing ourselves more directly with each other. That's what Christ's Church is for. We work together like body parts. And how we, at the end of the age so far, could leverage our technology and resources. We should all know the farmers and the builders and the mechanics and the engineers and the ranchers and the bakers and the teachers so that we can help each other in real, everyday ways, not disregarding the wise councellor with the Holy Spirit's gifts of the words of wisdom and knowledge and the discernment of spirits and prophecy, etc.

If we were to filter non-Christians who claim to be Christians in name only by the methods God has given to us, then we wouldn't be fighting falsehood so much that we barely push ahead. The evil debater that always keeps us unbalanced can be replaced with the type of working straightforwardness that earlier generations perhaps put on too high a pedestal in their own generations, having heard of them in previous ones, in order to pretend to have what their fathers had in name, but which we think of as old fashioned, even though they only had a half portion of the stuff! Oh, how we've fallen down, and oh, how God has us firmly in the security of His strong right hand! We are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves us with more than sentimentality and the surface politeness that disregards the problem in the child and pretends that the World's structure is sufficiently useful.

God is love. And then there's faith and hope and all the good things, worked out in flesh and blood in His Universe! We are rich and will live forever! Let's start acting like it by expressing our riches freely. Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what richness of purpose in every being who belongs to God.