Yesterday my Christian Growth and Discipleship class spent class time at the home of my co-teacher and friend Mark Liederbach for a time of spiritual reflection. Mark owns a 16 acre tract of land with horses, woods, and the beauty of God’s creation all around.
I sat in my lawn chair deep in the woods. Since my teen years I have always been encouraged by forests; listening to the sounds, watching the bugs and the birds, enjoying the fresh air. We need to unplug ourselves regularly from assignments, worries, and simply rest in the shalom of our God.
As I sat there praying, journaling, and reflecting, I noticed a little green inchworm near my foot. It stood out clearly in the brown leaves it traversed. I marveled at its peculiar form of movement. The little boy in me thought, “When it gets a little closer I will put it on my chair arm and watch it for a bit.” No, it doesn’t take much to entertain me.
Then I noticed something peculiar. It kept inching its way, but never seemed to make any progress. Sort of how my life has seemed the last few weeks, actually. I looked closer and noticed something ominous, at least for the little caterpillar.
On the back end of the little inchworm a wolf spider had its fangs firmly entrenched in its body. Try as it would, the inchworm was going nowhere. Except to its death. I could not see the spider at first because unlike the inchworm it blended in perfectly with the leaves.
The wolf spider illustrates the perfect predator. Camouflaged, fast, with powerful legs and formidable fangs, the poor inchworm did not have a chance.
And then I thought about us, about how any times people are like that inchworm, moving forward, trying to make a difference, standing out in a crowd, when someone comes out of nowhere to slam them. Not with a spider’s venom, but with the poison of critical words.
I have met so many people who were in church but no longer are because of the venom of church people who spend their lives it seems finding fault in others rather than edifying. Our “got you” culture relishes catching people in character flaws and publishing their findings for all to see. Television networks survive by reporting the “news” of “celebrities” who did something stupid (I do not watch TMZ). “What happens here, stays on Youtube,” Eric Qualman has noted.
Certainly there is a place in the church to point out obvious character flaws and to hold one another accountable. And, ministers of the gospels have a calling to point out the idols of our time—the obvious ones of legalism, antinomianism, consumerism, materialism, and a host of less obvious –isms—and confront them with the gospel.
But that is not the same thing as living with a “got you” posture, one that constantly notes the flaws in others. It seems some believers are not happy unless they are criticizing one another.
It takes very little ability or insight to spend your time noting the failures of others.
Stop and ask yourself, in the last year, what has been my influence on the unbelieving friends in my life? If there is a tendency for them to be less interested in Christ because of your relationships with them, it could be because you have boldly proclaimed the gospel and they reject it. But it could also be because your incessant criticism of other believers has caused them not to want to have anything to do with Christianity.
I have talked with more than one unchurched friend in recent days whose attitude toward our faith is not positive because of the attitude of some Christians toward others. We have earned the stereotype as morality police; oh that we would earn a label like one spoken by an unbeliever in the early church: “my how they love one another.”
We are not perfect. We sin. We have flaws. We need God’s grace daily. But we would serve the church and our Lord well if we focused a little more on noting the progress in the gospel being made by fellow believers and a little less on their shortcomings. Paul had the uncanny ability to point out the areas of needed change in the churches he wrote. But read his letters: again and again he began the letters with great encouragement in the gospel. And, even when he had to correct, like in the case of the Corinthians, he continued to point out encouraging signs in their lives.
We could learn a lot today from Paul.
Our culture so easily lapses into fault-finding, character assassination, while too many believers spend more time confessing the sins of others than our own. Perhaps today, and for just a few days, we could focus on what we see that is good and godly in those around us, and speak words of encouragement to the face of those we call brothers and sisters instead and sneaking up to find fault.
Find someone today and encourage them. Note something that reflects Christ. It is there, and may in fact be more obvious than the flaws we tend to see first.
