A few weeks ago, I wrote a post generally asking, “If you don’t believe in my God, why are you so opposed to him?” I wondered why, if my God is a harmless nothing, are you threatened by him? Why can’t you just let me live my life as I wish?
But now it’s time to flip that on its head and ask those who believe as I do, “If you can recognize that others don’t believe in your God, why would you expect them to act as if they do?”
And here is my reasoning: I’m not going to sit here and tell you to adhere to my standards. I already know you don’t believe what I believe, why should I think that I can force you to do what my beliefs require of me?
That’s where I think American Christian history is at its worst. We can make the argument that one should not do something because it is hurtful or damaging in general to most members of society, but we should not make the argument that one should oppose it because “God said so.” There is a place for this at some point, but for now, if they don’t believe in God, why should they have to do what some “sky-fairy” tells them to do?
This may sound overly harsh of Christianity and I know some Christians would bristle at this approach. But I come from this perspective: I am called as a Christian to love others. I am called to be salt and light in the world in which I live. Paul himself tells us not to associate with the scandalous, but quickly says, “I’m not speaking about those in the world. If we couldn’t associate with them, then we couldn’t associate with anybody.” He was talking about those in the church who claimed Christ but went on and lived like they didn’t – those who were poison both within the church and to the church.
But how are we to approach those who don’t believe? Peter would say we should be ready to tell them why we believe as we do…but with gentleness and respect. Not by grabbing them by the backs of their necks and shoving our God in their faces screaming “you must do this because our Bible commands it!”
News flash: They don’t believe what the Bible says!
Naturally, we’re going to want to live in a society that adheres to our moral standards – and it can be fairly easy to confuse the cases because a lot of them overlap. I mean, it’s not illegal to murder someone just because God said so. But first century Christians lived in societies that glorified violence and sexuality at the highest levels, and it wasn’t until they became a political power that they stopped being the meek who would inherit the earth and started being inquisitors who burned heretics.
And what about today? We have the freedom to be politically involved, and we should certainly vote for those who most closely represent our beliefs, but we cannot be surprised when others – others who believe much differently than us – do the same. Yet while we may vote our beliefs and consciences, one thing we must not do is tie ourselves to a political faction. To do so would not make the faction any better, but would most certainly make us worse. It has made us worse. It has fairly well destroyed our Christian witness to the world and is fixing to bring a political backlash of wrath where, sadly, we may indeed rediscover what it means to be a truly persecuted minority.
We Christians should certainly be heartbroken when we see others around us rejecting God and living destructive lives – lives that, although they may look carefree and entertaining, we believe are ultimately unfulfilling. And worse still, are destined to a far worse fate.
But we also must remember: they do not believe this, and we should not act like they do. Rather, we must do the hard work of convincing them not by force, but by showing them the true love of Christ and letting God do his work among them.
