Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Good Christian behaviour? Yeah right.

It was nearly my ninth birthday and i was to have a party. I wrote out the invitations and took them to school to hand out. I gave one to Linda. She glanced at the other invitations in my hand and said, 'Are you inviting Jane?'
'Yes,' I nodded.
'I'm not coming then. And neither will Susan.'

I'm ashamed to say I didn't give Jane her invitation, even after my mum told me off. But I'm a grown-up now and I don't give in to blackmail so easily. Especially not to words or actions implying, 'I'm not coming if she's going to be there.'

Why? Because you're judging her and finding her less worthy/more of a sinner than you?

It's strange how often people believe - and I think they really do believe - that God supports their prejudices, that what they are doing is what God wants them to do. 

Recently there was a Billy Graham quote going around on Facebook. I've edited it slightly:
It's the Holy Spirit's job to convict - us of our sins not the sins of others.
It is God's job to judge - us not set us up as judges of others.
It is our job to love.

5 comments:

Furtheron said...

I'm involved in something where some people have unilaterally withdrawn from the collective as they were in a minority over something and felt that they were persecuted - or at least ignored in someway.

Now I've continued to argue whenever I'm in the collective that we continue to include these people in our whole - we don't exclude them even though they have excluded themselves and they don't contribute to the collective since we should continue to say "We know you don't agree with the majority of the collective on some issues. But, we still want you to be part of us not separate from us". I know some argue strongly that "They don't play with us, we should shut the door on us" (I paraphrase) If that ever gained the majority view and was agreed as policy I'd be very very sad and have to question my level of contribution to the collective as I'd feel far more uncomfortable then that we've lost what ought to be our abiding principle that the door remains always open.

BTW- for me this comes from a moral obligation as you know I don't have to have a religion to define my good behaviour

SmitoniusAndSonata said...

It's my job to love everyone ... but not always to love what they do , surely ?
But there are times when one wants to do something more immediately effective than radiate love

Liz Hinds said...

Definitely not, sonata, and there is a time for discipline but the particular 'sins' I'm thinking of and that caused me to write this are to to do with life style choices - or perhaps not choices. And love is expressed far better actively than by radiation!

I agree with your in principle, graham, and the over-riding ethos of Zac's, for example, is that all are very definitely welcomed onto what we hope is a level playing field. But sometimes I do feel the urge to childish behaviour and want to take my ball home!

nick said...

Clearly pettiness is not confined to the irreligious! I would also want to include everybody in a social event, however difficult they were being about it. Why answer pettiness with pettiness?

Liz Hinds said...

Very true, Nick.