Today’s reading: Numbers 25; 1 Peter 2
According to Peter, our lives and conduct as Christians should be such that we force people into a place of cognitive dissonance. Jesus Himself warned us that the world would hate us because we belong to Him. He declares that everyone’s works are evil and they need a savior, but people don’t want to hear or admit that about themselves so they malign and reject Jesus. And Jesus told us from the beginning that, if we align ourselves with Him, we will be in the crosshairs as well. So Peter tells us that because the world hates us for belonging to Jesus, we must give the world no foothold for an accusation against us, and more than that, we must be actively walking in good works that refute whatever narrative the world spins against Christ and His people.
What really pains me about this call from Peter though is that I would not say that is the reputation of the church today, at least not in America. Even coming from a place of being obviously sympathetic to Christianity, I feel like the public face of the church in America is characterized by much the opposite of what Peter is describing. If you think about the kinds of things the church has been known for over the past couple decades, its things like picketing abortion clinics and hating LGBT people. I used to work right by the convention center in Columbus, OH and I remember one year that a Southern Baptist convention was in town. There were multiple vans pulled up on the street outside the convention center with things like, “God hates gays!” painted all over them. Worse than that, men set up megaphones declaring God’s judgement upon all the “sinners” walking by on the sidewalk. Not that I would agree with it anyway, but this wasn’t even some sort of gay conference or something they were protesting at, this was their own conference and they just needed to let everyone around know how full of hate they were. It was shameful and disgusting.
To be blunt, I am opposed to abortion as birth control, and the Bible does teach that homosexuality is a sin, but holding those views does not mean we have to hate and alienate people who disagree. Jesus certainly thought extortion and prostitution were sinful, and yet he was friends with tax collectors and prostitutes. Paul tells the Corinthians that we are to judge sin within the church, among those who share our theological and religious convictions and have decided to give their lives to Jesus, but he says our place is not in judging those outside the church. Each person is going to struggle with and sympathize with different things that God tells us are opposed to His will, but no where does He call us to pronounce judgement on those outside the church who disagree. Those are the very people we are called to love and care for in Jesus’ name.
This shouldn’t be the reputation of the church. Part of the reason it continues to be though is the inactivity of much of the rest of the church. There are a lot of Christians who do not stand with the vitriol and hate that we see from the kind of Christians who tend to make the news. The problem is that too many churches are just entirely a non-factor as far as their community is concerned. They might not be doing anything offensive, but that is not the bar Peter is calling us to. Not being unnecessarily offensive is not how you love people, that’s just how you keep people from being mad at you. Loving people is an active pursuit of looking for needs and seeking opportunities to meet those needs in meaningful ways. This is why Peter tells his readers that they should be silencing the ignorance of foolish people by doing good.
So to any Christian who reads this I would ask, “What good are you doing for those around you? Is your life characterized by the kind of good works that gives people pause who want to malign your savior?”
Simply being inoffensive is not enough. We, as individuals and as churches, should be actively glorifying God by the ways we love and serve the communities He has placed us in. There will always be “Christians” out there doing Satan’s work for him, giving people a reason to be opposed to Jesus, the Bible, the church, etc., but we cannot let them have the last word among our friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, or communities at large. But if we are not out actively, by word and deed, showing the world that our God is a God of love, grace, compassion, and redemption, we are leaving the world around us with a desperately wrong picture of the God who died to save them.
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