The Christian Hypocrite...

There are many problems within the Christian religion that keep us from being the Christians God Wants us to be. These issues are us (keep this in mind), not God and we need to fix them (or ask God to help us fix our hearts). The issues keep us from spreading God's word to others around us and is often the reason people never accept Christ! This is why we must address these problems.

The most obvious issue are Hypocrites within the church. I think everybody struggles with this from time to time. I will be honest and say that I do, weather I realize it or not. But when we realize it, are we fixing it, or are we continuing to be hypocrites? That's what makes the difference.

You know what I mean by hypocrite...It's what I like to call "The Sunday morning Christian." The people who go to church on Sunday, nod their head, say Amen, dress nice, bring their Bible, and then leave church and act like a totally different person. Sometimes, I am shocked to see facebook pictures or hear stories about people who look like avid church goers on Sunday morning becoming crazy drunk party people on Friday night.

Yes, everybody makes mistakes. But these kind of things can impact the world around us in a negative way. What we need to understand is, as Christians we are called to be a part in the Great Commission and continue to tell everybody the good news of Christ and God's love for us. It makes it so much harder for people to believe that there is a difference between a christian and a non-christian when people who say they are Christians on Sunday morning are not acting very christian-like through out the rest of the week.

I once heard a waiter say that the worst time of the week at the restaurant he worked in was Sunday afternoon when all the church-goers were stopping by for lunch on their way home. This is because they were apparently the rudest people of all. WHY is this?? I don't know about you, but it bothers me that Christians would be labeled this way! And rightly so...sometimes we ARE the rudest!

Francis Chan (author of Crazy Love), in one of his discussions on his Crazy Love book gave a great description for this kind of thing. He talked about being at a football game. He said to imagine the coach calls a time out and huddles his team together. He gives them this great pumped up pep talk. He goes on to give them strategies and plays to help them win the game. The players get into it! They nod and high-five and shout "yeah!" Then the whistle blows...the Coach sends them back to the feild...and...they all walk off as if the game was over and go home. The crowd looks puzzled. The other team stands confused. The coach is irritated because they were seconds away from a win.

That seems down right ridiculous doesn't it? No football team would ever do that! But, WE, as Christians, do just that EVERY Sunday morning! We come in to church (we are the team), get fired up, nod our heads, shout "amen!" and then leave Church and never do anything the preacher or God (the Coach) tells us we should be doing. By doing this, we let "the crowd" or in our case all the non-church goers down because we are not doing our part (as the team of God's Followers) to share the good news or demonstrate God's love in any way. Even though we shouldnt be worried about what others think about us every second of the day...we also need to be careful we are not sending out mixed signals about what it means to be a christian as well. Jesus never said "take up you cross and follow me...and I will make it easy and for you while I do all the hard work." It wont be easy.

So My question is, are we going to continue to praise God on Sundays and live in total and complete sin on all other days while failing to lead others to Christ? Or are we going to clean up our act and try our best to never again be called a "Sunday Morning Christian?" It is our choice...we can make a difference!

God Bless,
Morgan