Aug 01 2008
Worse Than the Pagans
I can’t remember where I heard this idea…
Why does it so often seem that the non-Christian, secular, humanist acts in ways that most Christians should be acting and yet we look at ourselves and realize how horribly short we fall? Take for instance my brother-in-law Wayne. When I got out of the service my sister introduced me to him. They had been dating for a while at that point and were now engaged. Now I’ve always been a hard sell when it came to the guys who dated my sisters, but Wayne and I hit it off from the first time we met. He’s honestly one of the nicest guys that I’ve ever known and is truly the kind of person who’d give you the shirt off his own back. In many ways, I freely admit, he is a much nicer person than I.
Why is that? Why, when I’ve been a Christian for 20 years now should I still be such a schmuck at times? Shouldn’t the transforming of my mind have had some effect by now? And yet I am constantly humbled when I see what some non-Christians are doing to make a difference within their communities in light of what little I’m doing.
At times crawling on broken glass, whipping my back with a scourge just seems sooo appropriate.
I think it was in Mere Christianity that CS Lewis writes about a situation like this. There was a not-so-nice Christian that Lewis wonders what that person would have been like if he wasn’t saved. If he was this mean as a Christian, he must have been the devil as a non-Christian. His articulation is a lot better than my rendition, though.