The Lord has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? Only this: to do what is right, to show mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. ––Micah 6:8
You may have fallen for the oldest trick in the book. You can’t fake it. Conviction without character is a C-A-T-A-S-T-R-0-P-H-E.
Get this: no rearrangement of bad eggs can ever produce a good omelet. So start over! Work it from the inside out, beginning with your motives. Find good ones, and then you’ll get good results.
Satan’s goal is dysfunctional spirituality. He’s working overtime to create inauthentic, judgmental, insecure, and insulated Christians so in love with acting “Christian” that they don’t have a clue what it means to be one. They’re uncomfortable around people who aren’t Christians, they don’t know how to engage them, and they make “spiritual” excuses for not connecting with them: They’re bad influences, unrepentant, make bad choices.
Should people who don’t know Christ already know how to act like Him? I’m shocked how often Christians forget this maxim: Why do we keep expecting people who don’t know Jesus to act like Jesus?
Religious attitude confuses people and kills our compassion. Religious guys don’t understand the faith they claim. Anger and judgment often override love and compassion. They are not neighbors. They are synthetic, shallow, and too afraid to reach out to people not like themselves. They are dysfunctional, appearing sane but acting goofy in the face of huge needs around them.
In the end, it’s about them, their agendas, and their convenience while people lie dying by the side of the road. They are like the other folks in the Parable of the Good Samaritan who just don’t have the time for the hurting guy lying in the ditch. They have “rules of engagement” that say to the outsider “you can meet me on my terms when it’s convenient for me, but I refuse to get messy.”
I see myself in some of those descriptions. Do you? Take any condemnation or shame that you may feel to the foot of the cross. There, Jesus will exchange the world’s synthetic living for His authentic love. Thank God for that!
