Often times, as Christians, we get this mentality that it’s our job to fix people. That mentality is fueled by two ideas: 1) that we can see a person’s life objectively and 2) that we can judge sin.  Most time we don’t process it this way, but if we were to dissect our motives – then we’d know it to be true. But never once in scriptures are we called to fix people. Share the Good News? Yes. Show love and compassion? Yep. Fix people? Not once. If this is true then why we defaultly fall back on lecturing and preaching at people. It doesn’t work, so why do we do it?

What am I getting at? Well, in my latest clash with Pharisees, one of our students was being shackled by judgment – a harsh hand for something they did. Were they wrong? Sure. Do they know it? Yes. And in watching two people react to this student my eyes were really opened. One adult decided to lecture the young man pointing out the many ways his life has gone wrong. They wanted to convince him of their own rightness. This adult had not earned the right to speak into this student’s life.

The second person approached the young man very differently. This adult had been journeying with the student for quite some time. The first adult had not. The second adult had a conversation with the student; not lecturing or shaming them, but pursuing their heart. Through their conversation life change happened. The lecture just resulted in hardness of heart.

If journeying with a person works. If Christ’s example says that journey is the way… then why do we do it any other way? So many times we use the Bible or tradition or our own self-righteousness to separate us from others. It is used to fuel this air of judgmentalism (‘you’re sinful and I’m not’) which births this lecturing mentality. This way keeps us clean. It keeps us pious. And it keeps our hands from getting dirty. We ultimately remain in control.

To journey with people, we simply walk humbly with the Lord and invest our lives into others. With journey we are forced to be on God’s time table. It takes time and we have no control over situations or people that we encounter. Journey facilitates openness, authenticity, fragility, brokenness and a deeper love that we can experience alone. The lecture keeps an ‘us and them’ mentality that will always keeps us apart and we were never meant to be apart.

If we don’t journey with others in Christ, living loving, investing, then Gospel you live out is no longer the good news to those around you. It becomes a wall when it was meant to be an open hand. An open hand reaches out to others. An open hand accepts help. An open hand joins with someone else’s hand because the gospel was mean to be that way.

A fool lectures thinking they have it all figured out. A wise man knows he isn’t wise and has compassion for the one who has stumbled knowing they have stumbled too. Life is a journey that is out of our hands, out of our control, and beyond our understanding. So let us journey together, humbly together reaching out to the one who is in control and wants to journey with us.

We can tell people the right answers, but if we are unwilling to journey with them our words are meaningless… and so are our intentions.

As Christians we are promised in the Bible that we will face persecution and the world will hate us. Jesus said:

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. John 15:18

But my question [to American Christians] is this: Does the world hate us because of Christ within us? Or does it hate us because we have a tenancy to act like pompous, religious, harsh, judgmental,  know-it-alls?

I think we live with a false justification that if we act judgmental and non-Christlike it is okay because the world rejects us. And the Bible says we’ll be rejected. But, we aren’t called to make the world reject us. It should be simply be the existence of Christ within us and the path to which he calls us to walk that will bring rejection. Not the other way around. We’ve gone down the wrong road and forgotten who we were following in the first place.

Am I wrong?

[photo courtesy of Donny's Ramblings]

I received a myspace bulletin  from (XXXChurch.com).

The post is about Donnie a former porn producer who has turned his life over to the Lord. Donny was a pastors son who rebelled and ran from God. But like a prodigal, the Lord has done amazing things with Donny. He’s turned his life around and now speaks out against the porn industry and how destructive porn can be. His story is inspiring change in many hurt and broken people. Sounds like a great story right? Something to inspire the church? You know, how God heals and restores lives. Well, here is how someone responded to Donny.

“Right now CPS (child protective services) is sticking their nose into my life because some idiot at a local church told them I used to be a porn producer and that they should investigate to make sure I never exposed my son to anything he shouldn’t see. That is ridiculous, as I would never in a million years do such a thing. They listened to him because he’s a licensed counselor and therefore has contacts inside CPS.

What this does to me is raise up all the old bitterness I feel towards anything to do with churches, and I’m battling a raging anger and hatred at the moment. Why is it that churches have to bury their wounded? I don’t understand it. Now CPS wants to talk to my son, and every attorney I’ve spoken with says there is nothing we can do to keep them from talking to him. God only knows what types of questions they’re going to ask. A 7 year old should not have to be exposed to such things. And I have no doubts that as he gets older he’ll remember being asked about this and wondering why he was made to go into a meeting, alone, with total strangers and answer questions about his daddy… How ignorant the majority of Christians are? How they act like anything BUT God?”     -  Donny

Some good questions were brought up.

Why do we bury our wounded?
How come sometimes we (Christians) act like anything but God?
Why are so many of us so ignorant?

For more about Donny check out his blog here.