Christians Are the Worst

Christians are the best.

Christianity is the only religion where its followers must believe that those who disagree with them are better than they are.  That’s right: the “born again” Christian believes his adversaries are better than he is.  The humility that goes with real conversion causes the believer to regard himself as at least as low as the worst of sinners.  Not in the way that most "christians" do, though.  When polled, most “christians” would deny considering themselves better than the rest of humanity, but they only accept the "sinners" when the sinners seem to be on the way to salvation.

In other words, if a dirt-covered addict starts attending church regularly and pronounces that the Christian way is right, the “christian” may give moderately to the addict, and be willing to associate with him increasingly as the addict becomes more like the “christian”.  However, when the addict relapses or rejects the “christian”, the “christian” is lightning-quick in cutting him off.  "After all," he reasons, "that sinner didn't appreciate all that I was willing to give him."

Now consider another scenario, where the “christian” becomes aware of a clean, prosperous, rich man in the community.  In an obvious condemnation of the “christian”, the rich man does not even need to attend the church; the “christian” will seek him out and ‘witness’ to him, attempting to draw him into the church.  Even if the rich man continues to stay away from the church, the “christian” will continue to golf with him, go to dinner with him, play tennis with him.

I want to purposely avoid evaluating which of these two is a better way to witness.  I only mean to point out that there is a difference in the way this “christian” treats the poor and the rich.  Even though the “christian” has stated that he considers himself on the same level as all people, he obviously still ranks himself: higher than the addict; lower than the rich.  He feels noble when he is around the addict, and privileged around the rich.

Instead, the real Christian truly realizes that his sin places him as far from God as the worst of sinners.  In fact, when you ask either the true Christian or the fake, “Are you the most righteous person on earth?”, they will inevitably answer a resounding “No!”  No objective person can truly believe that he/she does the most righteous works of any human.  Most are smart enough to not even rank themselves in the top five percent.  There is always someone, if not many people, who does more righteous works.  This brings the true Christian to the point of realizing that, on his own, he is just as bad as the worst of sinners and not as good as the best.  Christians are the worst!  …and they know it.

          However, there is also a group of middle class “christians” who have escaped this condemning rant.  They treat all people the same.  The rich disgust them just as much as the poor.  “Look at those rich people!  So extravagant!  Spending way too much on frivolous things!  So caught up in earthly things!  I hope I never have that much money…and if I did, I’d give it to the church!”  If it were a 5 year old, you’d immediately detect the resentment and the jealousy, but because it’s a 35 year old and it’s in a church, we call it “Christ-like”.

Even if you still deny such an attitude is driven by jealousy, you can’t escape the fact that the money is the influential factor.  This is a bad sign.  Whether showing preference to the rich because of money or disliking them because of money, the “christian” ranks the worthiness based on money.  Instead, the true Christian is emboldened by God’s love.  For those who truly believe that a relationship with God is the only valuable pursuit in life, another person’s massive collection of money is no more intimidating than a massive collection of old cookie jars – totally irrelevant to ranking; no advantage, no disadvantage (unless, of course, the cookie jar collector is disadvantaged by believing the collection ranks him/her higher).  In this way, Christians are the best.  There is no person who could possibly rank higher.

As we would expect, Jesus exemplifies this beautifully.  He's known for associating with two groups: the prostitutes and the tax collectors.  Those were the poorest and the richest people in society – the addicts and the elite.  He did not despise the rich for being rich or the poor for being poor.  The only group He repeatedly scolded were the deeply religious, because they usually believed their righteous works ranked them higher than others.  Anyone who insists on using their own ranking system instead of wholly accepting God’s is without a hope for pleasing Him.

“The gospel is: ‘You’re more sinful than you ever dared believe; you’re more loved than you ever dared hope.’  The more sinful keeps you from feeling more superior than people; the more loved keeps you from feeling inferior to people.” –Timothy Keller

If you're in Thursday's group, we'll be considering the following:

Why is it we are prone to think that our life has exceptions to the life rules given us in the Scriptures?  What are some kinds of exceptions people make to the rule of submitting ourselves to one another?

“Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another.” How did Jesus do this toward us?

Would the people who know you best say you submit to them?  What would be the best way to get an accurate answer to it?