This one’s for us Christians. You know, CHRIST-ians. Christ-like people. Little Jesuses. We represent God Himself. We’d better be doing it right!
When you meet a person and you know they are part of a specific group, you have a tendency to judge the group based on this one person’s actions. In essence, they represent their group or organization. Since this group obviously has a particular set of people, you will judge what set of people they are based on the person you have just met. Surely this person fully represents what their group is or stands for. Usually they do. But you know exactly how this works. If you don’t like this person, you assume that you won’t like their group. At best you’ll be skeptical. If you do like this person, you assume at least that you might possibly like their group.
So how’s your representation of Jesus going? We Christians are the face of Jesus. You wear His coat, if you will. We are what Jesus looks like for those who have never met Him. A lot of Christians (and sometimes I hope they’re just saying they are Christians) are belligerent about their beliefs, telling people how much God hates them. We ought not to do that! God is not pleased by this! When you act hateful, unloving, hypocritical, and otherwise unlike Jesus, you are making God look bad. If God is supposed to be loving and you aren’t, then what is anyone supposed to think?
But if you are very much like God intends and commands, you will make God look good. Then others will want to know more, and they will see He is even better than your tiny representation of Him!
I know this is pretty obvious to some, but sometimes you just need a reminder laid out in front of you. I know I do.
So how’s your representation?
How is mine?