How to Show Christian Charity Whilst Being Hated by the World

Undoubtedly, secularists are increasingly hostile against The Gospel and Christians. There’s no shortage of politicians, commentators, personalities and other assorted talking heads employing vicious rhetoric, inclining many hearts to view believers with utter contempt. Much of this is due to the manner in which they’re presenting Christians, using loaded terms such as “bigoted”, “intolerant”, “hateful”, “deplorable”, “racist”, “homophobe” and the like.

These classifications are completely euphemistic – therein lies the whole purpose of such name calling. Christ’s disciples are supposed to be human waste in the eyes of anyone who isn’t a believer.

The question is how to minister to those who are increasingly turning against Christianity?

Historically speaking, such hostility against The Faith is not new. Anyone who reads the Gospels, Acts and some church history will note that disdain and outright persecution of Christ and his followers has been a reality since the beginning. Yet in the midst of such fiery antipathy the Good News continued and continues to spread. How so?

The answer lies in not reciprocating the world’s hatred.

Christ makes this explicitly clear when he teaches that Christians ought to love their enemies and pray for those that persecute them. (Matthew 5:43-48) This is an important personal reminder: consider that not a few non-secular persons will, intentionally or unintentionally, influence us to view sinners as abhorrent people, worthy of our scorn, instead of lost folk needing redemption. We mustn’t forget that we were once alienated from God because of our own sin. (Colossians 1:21-23) It took a loving Christian or Christians insisting we hear the Gospel regardless of our antipathy toward them. Imagine if they would have come to despise us instead – what then?

A last word: Not repaying the world’s disdain shouldn’t be conflated with a call to refrain from discerning and denouncing sinful, malicious activity. (John 7:24; Titus 2:15) Some have come to advance the erroneous idea that non-judgment is a virtue, a demonstration of not repaying evil with evil (in truth, refraining from judging at all is a virtual impossibility), when all it is is cowardice in disguise. Also, loving one’s enemies doesn’t give a sinner permission to abuse Christians.

Sermon: When Christians Imitate Sinners Instead of Christ

Description: We visit Titus chapter 2 and examine how believers are called to imitate Christ and then model such maturity unto others. With the increasing secularization of Christianity in the West, this order has been abandoned in favor of a sinful inclination – namely, the imitation of all that is wicked and contrary to Biblical godliness.

The New Puritanical Pharisees

It’s been some time since the terms Pharisee and Puritan were converted into pejoratives, used to describe a hypocrite and overly judgmental censor respectively. In many cases, these words have been employed against Biblical Christians by secularists to euphemistically represent our views as duplicitous and repressive to the rest of society.

Ironically enough, those very same heralds of human liberty who’ve denounced Christianity’s propensity to enslave (I write this sarcastically), have turned out to be the very same thing they’ve supposedly been fighting all along.

Good on Trump for Moving our Embassy to Jerusalem

Although many Christians have severe differences of opinion with President Trump over certain policy positions, his decision to move the US’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem shouldn’t be among them. Understanding the soteriological and prophetic importance that the nation of Israel is for Christianity, the move ought to have made believers giddy. However, this hasn’t happened among many who denominate themselves Christ followers. Why?

Which is Worse, Xenophobes or Traitors?

Character assassination is one of the trademarks of Leftist tacticians. Instead of debating the merits of an argument or idea, they demonize and attempt to censor their ideological opponents (as proven, once again, by Google’s latest actions). It can also be said that the ploy is an implicit admission that the Left’s pet dogmas are inherently weak, cannot stand scrutiny and therefore need to be upheld by repressive means.

Are Megachurces as “Normal” as 300-yard Golf Drives?

As my wife and I were enjoying a casual stroll recently, the subject of false perceptions came about. We spoke at length about how many things which are presented to the public as “normal” are anything but. If anything, they are aberrations.

To prove the point, I alluded to an example I’m well acquainted with: golf. More specifically, the professional golf industry.

Can a Christian Love Jesus but Hate Other Christians?

Tell me if you’ve heard these phrases uttered before:

“I love Jesus, but I detest religion.”

“I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.”

“I love Jesus, but I can’t stand Christians because they are such hypocrites.”

The first and the third ideas are usually repeated by those that assist megachurches and are trend-following Christians. The second and third utterances are customarily stated by sinners of all stripes in one form or another. Do you desire to know what characterizes everyone who has repeated any of the three? They are all unbearably self-righteous.