My Story: Christians not Christ-like

More questions about Christians not acting like Christ

Another phenomenon came to my attention which I will use a story to illustrate. An acquaintance of mine worked at a local wireless store and dealt with customers all day. She often had angry and frustrate customers that would test her ability to remain calm and professional. And yet she never broke down and cried over a customer’s rudeness. With one exception. The most well-known, and greatly respected (at the time) leader of the seminary and frequent church speaker came into her store with a wireless issue. And this man was so incredibly rude that for the first and only time this saleswoman broke down in tears.

So an atheist or “normal, nominal” Christian who isn’t as close to God, could be rude; but a church leader would outdo him?

What I began to question was this: if God was so powerful and He truly changed the lives of those who believed, why were they no better than those who didn’t believe. In some cases there were ever worse? Don’t misunderstand me, I never expected perfection. Marginal improvement would have been sufficient. I understood sanctification, the idea that we are saved once and then throughout life we are constantly being changed to be more like God.

High school friends illustrated this as well. Those who remained the most in tune to the church I grew up in, who were living the most Godly lives supposedly, and were the most moral in terms of my upbringing, were the first to throw away our friendship. Why? To this day I don’t fully know. What I can guess is that it was most often over mild differences in lifestyle and moral choices and perhaps things they had heard through the grapevine but never once talked to me about.

And who remained close friends after I left? One was an atheist and the other non-religious. Doesn’t prove anything simply an observation.

It seemed that Christianity as a whole was more concerned with what you did with your own body in the privacy of your own bedroom than with how you treated people on a regular basis.

Luckily, for me I found a group that was not like this. While intensely conservative and spiritual (as in literally preaching on the streets), the main group I associated with in college was the warmest, most loving, and most genuine group of singles I had met to that point. I am still friends with many of them and it thrills me and fascinates me to see their growth and development both spiritually and intellectually over the last five years as we’ve gone our own ways (more on that later).

This group helped me stay close to God and study the Bible in college and helped me find a good church to get involved in.

Of course the vast majority of Christians I knew, still fell outside of what I felt a Christian should be like. There was just no excuse for the ridiculously bigoted beliefs that so many Christians had. Jesus wasn’t like this. And once again: if indeed we believe that an all powerful God has saved us by sending his Son to pay for our sins and now lives inside of us to change us to be more like him: there should be a marked change for the better, particularly in those who have known Him for a long time. And that change should be greater than the growth shown by non-believers in similar areas without the help of Christ. This is simple logic. And yet I have seen growth in those without Christ often far outpace the growth in those who have him.