Being a Christian is hard. I’m not complaining, just stating a fact. I mean, even the smallest of things is sometimes difficult to do. Take love for example. The scripture is full of commands to love one another. Jesus made it clear that all of Christianity could be summed up in “Love God, Love Others”. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:2 to “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing one another in love.” John instructs us to “love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” ~ 1 John 4:7 Peter tells us “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” ~ 1 Peter 4:8. And of course, Jesus himself said “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” ~ John 13:35.
The problem with this is, let’s face it: some people are just downright unloveable. Especially Christians. There are quite a few non-believers that I would rather hang out with than some Christians. Why is it so hard to love some people? And while I’m one who relies rather heavily on grace and not “rules” I do believe that the instructions to love each other are ones to be followed. This is a prevalent theme in scripture. How then can we reconcile our instructions to love each other with our natural tendency to want to arrange for some Christians to meet Jesus sooner than they want to?
Maybe we should start by recognizing what it is about some people that drive us crazy. We may be surprised (or maybe not) to find that the same things that make us want to do bodily harm to some Christians are the same things that non-believers find so annoying about Christians. They do tend to lump us all in one group. Where Christians can see Charismatics and Catholics as two distinct groups of believers and understand the distinction, most non-believers will just lump us all in the category of “Christian”. Therefore, the idiosyncrasies that are particular to charismatic Christians will also be attributed to Catholics by most non-Christians. So what is it about “Christians” that we find annoying?
Hypocrisy has to be at the top of the list. It is at the top of the list for non-believers. There are people I know who have been Christians for decades, and yet they don’t live a Christian life. They gossip. They slander. They lie. And while I’ll be the first to admit that everyone is dealing with something in their life, these people don’t seem to be just going through a phase or tough time in their lives. No, these people just live where they are. They’re mean. They are just people that are difficult to be around sometimes, much less love. It’s hard to love hypocrites. Especially when you are the one on the receiving end of their bitterness.
But the fact remains that we are instructed over and over to love each other. By “each other” the Bible is referring to other Christians. The people who tend to get under our skin the most sometimes. How do we love people who are irritating, annoying, time-consuming, needy and abrasive? If you are part of a family, you already know the answer to that question. You see, the Bible also makes it clear that the church is a family. We are called brothers and sisters. Some of us “more mature” (read older) Christians are to be father and mother figures to some of the younger Christians. This also means that some of the younger Christians will be spiritual children to the older Christians. So let me ask you. Did you ever feel animosity toward your brother or sister? Did you ever rebel against your father or mother? Did you ever wish you could return one of your children to Wal-Mart? I can answer yes to all three of those.
My sister and I didn’t get along very well when we were younger. We often fought. And yet, when someone spit in her face in high school, I was the one who came to her defense and hunted the person down like a felon. She was my sister, and while I didn’t always like her, everyone else had better like her and treat her nicely.
Long before I turned 18 I thought I was an adult. As the son of a pastor, there were certain expectations that people had of me. I was determined, as most pastors kids are, to dispel every one of those expectations. I started smoking when I was 13. I began acting out in school and often got after school detention and even suspended. I began cursing around friends in school just to be “cool”. I rebelled against what my parents expected of me. I rebelled against Christianity. And yet, I was the first one to come to the defense of my parents when others would talk about them. When church members would say or do things against my father’s position as pastor, I was ready to defend him to the death. He was my father.
We moved to North Carolina from Florida in 1999. We had only been in North Carolina for a few weeks when my oldest child decided that she wanted to move back to Florida to be with her boyfriend. We were heart broken. We were angry. How could our child treat us this way?
We received a call one Wednesday morning from her two years later. She was in tears and wanted to come home. NOW. We jumped in the car and went down the next day to bring her home. A similar situation happened with our middle child. She decided one day that she didn’t like living at home any longer. She was going to leave home and move in with a friend. A month later, she called at midnight for us to come and get her. We arrived at the home of her friend to find the friend tossing her belongings out the front door. Did I defend her? I sure did! Why? In both instances, my children did something that was unloving. They chose a boyfriend over their father. They chose a friend over their parents. They threw us to the curb in favor of someone else. They acted unloveable. And yet I came to their rescue each time. Why? Because they were my children and even though they had done something that was unloveable, they were still my daughters. And I was perfectly within my right to not like them, but everyone else had better be nice to them!
The same principle is true for us as Christians. We are part of the same family. Not just like family. Real family. God said that we have been adopted into his family as his sons and daughters. As Christians, we are all brothers an sisters. Those of us with siblings understand that the hardest people to love sometimes are our own brothers or sisters. The problem is that often times we don’t want to like our brother. We want to hold a grudge against our sister. This is where Christianity gets hard sometimes for some people. Because we can’t hold a grudge. We can’t stay angry. The Bible says that if we do, it doesn’t hurt the person we’re angry with. It hurts us. Jesus even said that if we are praying while holding something against someone, that we should forgive them so that God will forgive us. (Mark 11:25).
Being a Christian is hard sometimes. It means doing things that don’t come naturally for us, like forgiving someone who has wronged us. Or loving someone who is unloveable.