East End

3-9-08

How would you respond to someone who said, “I don’t want to go to church because there are too many hypocrites there?” This is a very common thing that people give as a reason as to why they do not attend church. There are two approaches that you can take that will help with this. Clearly an approach that you may want to take, but is not a good idea is to respond, “Well if you come then there will be one more.” That approach never works no matter how bad you want to say it. We must remember that we are Christ’s representatives here on the earth. Therefore when we speak and act it must be done in love. The first approach you can take is to use Matthew 7:1-5. This passages talks about judging others. Jesus would specifically say, “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?” Many times when people pull out the response to the hypocrite card, they are wanting to judge people. They want to judge people either because they feel as though they are being judged or because they are judging themselves and they don’t like the person that is looking them back in the mirror. With this person using Matthew 7 is a good response because it calls on them to look inside themselves. You can also let them know through this Scripture that you aren’t judging them, because you know that “with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” In other words, how you judge someone will be how you are judged yourself. The second way that you can debunk this argument is by admitting that church isn’t about you, it is about God. That deflects all of the attention off of yourself because you are able to admit that you are not going to church for anyone else other than God. We have all seen the bumper sticker, “Christians aren’t perfect, they’re just forgiven.” This is a very true statement and what it does it point people to look towards the only perfect person, Jesus. The idea whenever someone gives you an objection about going to church or becoming a Christian is to always turn the conversation away from yourself and towards God. The reason for this is in the fact that we can not save anyone ourselves, we could not even save ourself. We needed Jesus, the spotless Lamb, to come down from heaven and die on the cross so that we could have a right relationship with God. So naturally we would want to point that out to people. It is okay to let people know about your faults and show them your human side. Sometimes God allows us to mess up in front of people so that we can remain humble as well as that gives us an open door to talk to people about God’s forgiveness. A conversation that is talking about Christianity should never begin with the word “I”, it should always be about what God has done! It is perfectly fine to tell someone, “I may not be perfect but God still loves me and He still loves you and wants you to come to Him in faith.” Hopefully this helps you feel more prepared to share your faith and live out your faith in front of a world that it watching!