The 'Becoming a Better Christian' Myth
September 20th 2011 19:15
I am becoming a ‘Better Christian”
I hear this phrase so often that I am choosing to address it here. There is no such thing. I will do
my best to explain it, but the concept is so entrenched in our pharisitic
(parasitic) Christian culture that I am sure 90% of people will take issue or
misunderstand. I don’t care. If I can help one person from losing their faith,
as did my daughter, because of this concept; I will take a thousand hate mails.
Better Christian? What is that?
Oh, I know the definition we use, it is ‘becoming more Christ like’. Just in trying to become ‘better’ we
become less like Christ. How? The very term ‘better’ implies a comparison. To whom or to
what are you comparing? I totally understand the argument that you are comparing
yourself to Christ and today you are more like Him than you were yesterday, so you say that makes you a ‘better’
Christian. I just have to interject that Christ Himself rejected the whole notion of comparison, to Him or anyone or
anything. Christ did NOT want Peter to become more like Christ. He did not want
to decide who was ‘closest’ to Him between James and John. To be more like
Christ means to become less. Less into self and more into Jesus.
Less into comparing and more into serving.
We are not called to the same calling as Jesus, or Peter, or Paul.
Not only that, but comparing requires that you are constantly evaluating yourself.
You are constantly focused on how well you are doing. I don’t ever hear Jesus telling the
disciples to do that. Do you? Please inform me if there is a place where He
speaks to them about becoming more like Himself and consistently comparing that
to an image they have of Him and what He would do. It’s not there. Paul says follow me as I follow
Jesus. He says he can be an example of how to do that. Yet, we will see that Paul set different standards for
different people. What was sin for one, was required of another.
• He came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was a Jewess and a believer, but whose father was a Greek. ... (3) Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. (4) As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. - Act 16:1, 3-4 NIV
• Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. (3) Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. - Gal 5:2-3 NIV
So, which is it? Paul had Timothy circumcised so that their testimony would be better received by the people they were seeking to teach. Yet it was Paul who told the Galations that if they got circumcised to be
better ‘christians’ in the eyes of the believers around them, then Christ was useless to them. They weren’t unsaved, but they had the power to make Christ Himself useless. They could not make use of Christ in their lives because they
were succumbing to the views of man concerning who Christ was and who and how they were supposed to be in becoming more ‘Christlike’.
So, unless we know exactly how Christ intends to use others, we had better not be holding them to the standards Christ gives us. In Christ we are individuals. We are loved individually. We are all different, with different uses and different tendencies. We will all incur the worldly penalties for the sins we commit in one way or another, but our sins are not to
be our focus. We are dead to them. The alcoholic who dies drunk, but loves Jesus may have seemed ‘useless’ and ‘unchristlike’ to us, but that person was no less ‘christian’ than the one who abstained for x number of years.
Becoming more Christlike means thinking less of self and more of others.
It means seeking God’s will and not man’s.
It means looking less and less like a ‘christian’ and more and more like a ‘slave’.
Which of us wants to get up in the morning and say,
“God, I want to own nothing, be nothing and have nothing. I want to be totally dependent on You for every bite I takeand every step I make. I want to go into the ditches and pig sties to find ‘the least of these” I want to reach out to those no one else will touch, the lepers in my society, I want to be the Good Samaritan?"
Or do our Sunday prayers sound more like,
“Thank You God for delivering me from( insert your sin here: alcoholism, drug addiction,
etc.)I pray for those who are still struggling with that sin. Lord, send someone to reach them with your love. Bring them here to your body so they can learn to be more like You and live in the joy I now have because I no longer (insert sin here).”
The Bible put it this way:
• (11) The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. (12) I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' (13) "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' (14) "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." - Luk 18:11-14 NIV
• or the NLT version:
(11) The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer : 'I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else. For I don't cheat, I don't sin, and I don't commit adultery. I'm certainly not like that tax collector! ... (13) "But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, 'O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.' (14) I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." - Luk 18:11, 13-14 NLT
Sadly, more of us pray like the latter than the former, though few of us want to admit it. Nope, instead we start asking if Jesus wants would use alcohol, smoke tobacco, get tattoos or piercings, be sexually active, do drugs, use curse
words, have sex with the same sex, etc. Then, when we decide what we think makes us more like that Christ we begin to
let others know so they can be like us being like that Jesus. If they don’t agree, we unfriend them in one way or another because they are not a ‘positive’ influence in our quest to be more like Jesus in our image. We start whole new
denominations in some cases.
Does anyone else realize that even Christ did not consider Himself to be a 'good teacher'? How could be possibly try to be 'good' Christians if Christ himself was not good at it?
• (18) A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (19) "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone. - Luk 18:18-19 NIV
•
Get real people. I just nearly lost my faith because of this type of judgment. Major crisis in my life. I was asked to teach. Teach in a church. Teach even men! I was waiting for lightening to strike me dead. That is unheard of and unholy in my previous circles.
Surely that is not going to make me more Christ like. I mean, who would want to let nearly half of the population, those with vaginas, teach from the Bible and dare to teach it to men? Of course Christ would want to stop that, right? Duh.
Men wanted to, not Christ. Christ told Mary to ‘go tell the men’ that He was risen. The men did not believe her. (Mark 16,Matt. 28, Luke 24,John 20) It wasn’t Jesus who told them not to respect her ‘teaching’ on His resurrection. It was their own bias in their own society of what constituted a trustworthy witness. The bias still exists. The comparisons are still made (I was made first, so I am over you vs. in Christ there is no male or female)
So,I am still scared to death. Am I afraid of what Christ will think of me? Not in the least. His Word will not return to Him void even if it is the rocks who have to cry out the truth. Surely even a female has more sense than a rock? If not, then you better speak to Jesus about being a better Christian because He consistently sent women to teach about Him.
(John 4: woman at the well, 2 john woman told to ‘judge a man’s teaching/faith before allowing him in her home, Luke 8 women mentioned in same context as disciples and as supporting the men financially)
No, I am not worried about whether or not Christ wants me to preach His Word, of that I now have no doubt, I am worried about you. My fellow believers. The ones who will think and say things about my motivation, my faith, my pride, my self righteousness, my sinfulness; etc. I have struggled for so long to do what is ‘right’ and what is ‘Christ like’ until I get to a point where I nearly implode. It has happened way too often in my walk and it can usually be traced right back to the fact that I am ‘not good enough, not like Christ enough, not pleasing enough” compared to whatever Christians I am surrounded by at the time. I really think I am supposed to be trying to do all the things they are saying God would or wouldn’t want in the life of a ‘good christian’. When there is a gray area, I am lost then. I implode. I don’t know how to be Jesus if His people aren’t able to show me. I get overwhelmed and do not trust myself to choose because I am not nearly as ‘good a christian’’as the people on each side of whatever dilemma I am facing: drinking, teaching, schooling, working, dancing, ……
My new response to people who say things like “jesus or god would never…:”? “
• ”Get behind me Satan for you do not have in mind the things of God but the things of man”.
You and I can never be ‘better’ Christians. NEVER!
Every single thing we do is so tainted by sin that God puts it in the red bag marked ‘biohazard’.
It is deadly to our faith to think that the things we do as humans can in any way make us more Godly. There are only two things that our lives can do that are positive: loving God, loving others. I honestly think God couldn’t give a
hoot about the rest of the crap as it does not make us more like Christ, it makes us more like the best human version of Christ. That was useless. All Christ’s humanity was good enough for was death. It was His godliness that
enabled Him to live sinlessly. It was his Godliness that allowed him to rise from the dead. It was His godliness that kept him from killing every Pharisee he came across, because his humanness gives the impression that he would have
preferred to wipe them out. His humanness is what gave us hope, just as our humanness should be giving others hope.
So, if you think that piling up a bunch of tampons makes you a ‘better christian’ then go for it. (Isaiah 64:6) I prefer to not be a slave to sin. To not spend my days thinking about the things of satan (sinfulness) in my life or that of others, and instead focus on Godliness: loving god and loving others. Every single time I see a direction or command given by god or Jesus concerning sin it is not to make us more like Him, it is to enable us to be less like satan and to help us to ‘eat, drink and be merry’ for that is all that we have here on earth. If we live our lives doing the things we believe God
does not want us personally to do, we will not be merry. We will not have good lives. That is the purpose of avoiding sin. Will a tattoo make my life less enjoyable? For me, the answer is yes. I do not like them at all. On the other hand, if I felt God asking me to get one because it would help me reach others, then I would be miserable without one.
The minute you accept Christ, you are FILLED with the Holy Spirit and sealed as His until the day of redemption.
Nobody can take that way. Nothing can make you ‘lose’it.
No amount of sin will separate you from Him.
No amount of ‘Christlike’ behavior will draw Him closer to you or give you more Holy Spirit.
You are full, He is inside you. Period.
So stop telling me that teaching, drinking, homosexuality, promiscuity, etc make me less of a Christian.
They may make my life more difficult. They may make my witness less useful. Or they may just be exactly
what Christ needs of me to reach someone whom you think isn’t in your ‘sphere of influence’.
They may be the ones in twenty years who get hookers off the street, who reach homosexuals with Christ’s love, who teach others how to ignore your judgment and just look at Jesus.
I do hope someday that my daughter will be able to forget those who destroyed her love for Jesus. By being their version of ‘christian’ they showed her a Jesus that was mean, judgmental, hypocritical and angry.
May God forgive them when they stand before Christ and see how all their ‘holy’ deeds and enforcement of such ‘high
standards’ drove my baby away from the cross of forgiveness.
And may He shame those of you who believe that doing or not doing certain things determines who
is the ‘better christian’. How shameful and useless your faith has become. If you are one of those people, please unfriend me, because I will confront it if I see it. That is who God has called me to be. Not in anger. Not in judgment.
Not in hatred. He has called me to be a light in the darkness that we call ‘better christianity’ and when light shines into darkness it can seem blindingly harsh no matter how dim it is to begin with. I love sinners too much to leave them
trapped in your darkness when God has truth that can free them from the bonds of living in constant fear of failure.
If I have been one of those people in your life, which I know I have been more times than I can count, I beg your forgiveness. I pray that you also will find peace and happiness in being the you God created you to be and not take on the image of anyone else or their view of Christ.
I hear this phrase so often that I am choosing to address it here. There is no such thing. I will do
my best to explain it, but the concept is so entrenched in our pharisitic
(parasitic) Christian culture that I am sure 90% of people will take issue or
misunderstand. I don’t care. If I can help one person from losing their faith,
as did my daughter, because of this concept; I will take a thousand hate mails.
Better Christian? What is that?
Oh, I know the definition we use, it is ‘becoming more Christ like’. Just in trying to become ‘better’ we
become less like Christ. How? The very term ‘better’ implies a comparison. To whom or to
what are you comparing? I totally understand the argument that you are comparing
yourself to Christ and today you are more like Him than you were yesterday, so you say that makes you a ‘better’
Christian. I just have to interject that Christ Himself rejected the whole notion of comparison, to Him or anyone or
anything. Christ did NOT want Peter to become more like Christ. He did not want
to decide who was ‘closest’ to Him between James and John. To be more like
Christ means to become less. Less into self and more into Jesus.
Less into comparing and more into serving.
We are not called to the same calling as Jesus, or Peter, or Paul.
Not only that, but comparing requires that you are constantly evaluating yourself.
You are constantly focused on how well you are doing. I don’t ever hear Jesus telling the
disciples to do that. Do you? Please inform me if there is a place where He
speaks to them about becoming more like Himself and consistently comparing that
to an image they have of Him and what He would do. It’s not there. Paul says follow me as I follow
Jesus. He says he can be an example of how to do that. Yet, we will see that Paul set different standards for
different people. What was sin for one, was required of another.
• He came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was a Jewess and a believer, but whose father was a Greek. ... (3) Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. (4) As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. - Act 16:1, 3-4 NIV
• Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. (3) Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. - Gal 5:2-3 NIV
So, which is it? Paul had Timothy circumcised so that their testimony would be better received by the people they were seeking to teach. Yet it was Paul who told the Galations that if they got circumcised to be
better ‘christians’ in the eyes of the believers around them, then Christ was useless to them. They weren’t unsaved, but they had the power to make Christ Himself useless. They could not make use of Christ in their lives because they
were succumbing to the views of man concerning who Christ was and who and how they were supposed to be in becoming more ‘Christlike’.
So, unless we know exactly how Christ intends to use others, we had better not be holding them to the standards Christ gives us. In Christ we are individuals. We are loved individually. We are all different, with different uses and different tendencies. We will all incur the worldly penalties for the sins we commit in one way or another, but our sins are not to
be our focus. We are dead to them. The alcoholic who dies drunk, but loves Jesus may have seemed ‘useless’ and ‘unchristlike’ to us, but that person was no less ‘christian’ than the one who abstained for x number of years.
Becoming more Christlike means thinking less of self and more of others.
It means seeking God’s will and not man’s.
It means looking less and less like a ‘christian’ and more and more like a ‘slave’.
Which of us wants to get up in the morning and say,
“God, I want to own nothing, be nothing and have nothing. I want to be totally dependent on You for every bite I takeand every step I make. I want to go into the ditches and pig sties to find ‘the least of these” I want to reach out to those no one else will touch, the lepers in my society, I want to be the Good Samaritan?"
Or do our Sunday prayers sound more like,
“Thank You God for delivering me from( insert your sin here: alcoholism, drug addiction,
etc.)I pray for those who are still struggling with that sin. Lord, send someone to reach them with your love. Bring them here to your body so they can learn to be more like You and live in the joy I now have because I no longer (insert sin here).”
The Bible put it this way:
• (11) The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. (12) I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' (13) "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' (14) "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." - Luk 18:11-14 NIV
• or the NLT version:
(11) The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer : 'I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else. For I don't cheat, I don't sin, and I don't commit adultery. I'm certainly not like that tax collector! ... (13) "But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, 'O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.' (14) I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." - Luk 18:11, 13-14 NLT
Sadly, more of us pray like the latter than the former, though few of us want to admit it. Nope, instead we start asking if Jesus wants would use alcohol, smoke tobacco, get tattoos or piercings, be sexually active, do drugs, use curse
words, have sex with the same sex, etc. Then, when we decide what we think makes us more like that Christ we begin to
let others know so they can be like us being like that Jesus. If they don’t agree, we unfriend them in one way or another because they are not a ‘positive’ influence in our quest to be more like Jesus in our image. We start whole new
denominations in some cases.
Does anyone else realize that even Christ did not consider Himself to be a 'good teacher'? How could be possibly try to be 'good' Christians if Christ himself was not good at it?
• (18) A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (19) "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone. - Luk 18:18-19 NIV
•
Get real people. I just nearly lost my faith because of this type of judgment. Major crisis in my life. I was asked to teach. Teach in a church. Teach even men! I was waiting for lightening to strike me dead. That is unheard of and unholy in my previous circles.
Surely that is not going to make me more Christ like. I mean, who would want to let nearly half of the population, those with vaginas, teach from the Bible and dare to teach it to men? Of course Christ would want to stop that, right? Duh.
Men wanted to, not Christ. Christ told Mary to ‘go tell the men’ that He was risen. The men did not believe her. (Mark 16,Matt. 28, Luke 24,John 20) It wasn’t Jesus who told them not to respect her ‘teaching’ on His resurrection. It was their own bias in their own society of what constituted a trustworthy witness. The bias still exists. The comparisons are still made (I was made first, so I am over you vs. in Christ there is no male or female)
So,I am still scared to death. Am I afraid of what Christ will think of me? Not in the least. His Word will not return to Him void even if it is the rocks who have to cry out the truth. Surely even a female has more sense than a rock? If not, then you better speak to Jesus about being a better Christian because He consistently sent women to teach about Him.
(John 4: woman at the well, 2 john woman told to ‘judge a man’s teaching/faith before allowing him in her home, Luke 8 women mentioned in same context as disciples and as supporting the men financially)
No, I am not worried about whether or not Christ wants me to preach His Word, of that I now have no doubt, I am worried about you. My fellow believers. The ones who will think and say things about my motivation, my faith, my pride, my self righteousness, my sinfulness; etc. I have struggled for so long to do what is ‘right’ and what is ‘Christ like’ until I get to a point where I nearly implode. It has happened way too often in my walk and it can usually be traced right back to the fact that I am ‘not good enough, not like Christ enough, not pleasing enough” compared to whatever Christians I am surrounded by at the time. I really think I am supposed to be trying to do all the things they are saying God would or wouldn’t want in the life of a ‘good christian’. When there is a gray area, I am lost then. I implode. I don’t know how to be Jesus if His people aren’t able to show me. I get overwhelmed and do not trust myself to choose because I am not nearly as ‘good a christian’’as the people on each side of whatever dilemma I am facing: drinking, teaching, schooling, working, dancing, ……
My new response to people who say things like “jesus or god would never…:”? “
• ”Get behind me Satan for you do not have in mind the things of God but the things of man”.
You and I can never be ‘better’ Christians. NEVER!
Every single thing we do is so tainted by sin that God puts it in the red bag marked ‘biohazard’.
It is deadly to our faith to think that the things we do as humans can in any way make us more Godly. There are only two things that our lives can do that are positive: loving God, loving others. I honestly think God couldn’t give a
hoot about the rest of the crap as it does not make us more like Christ, it makes us more like the best human version of Christ. That was useless. All Christ’s humanity was good enough for was death. It was His godliness that
enabled Him to live sinlessly. It was his Godliness that allowed him to rise from the dead. It was His godliness that kept him from killing every Pharisee he came across, because his humanness gives the impression that he would have
preferred to wipe them out. His humanness is what gave us hope, just as our humanness should be giving others hope.
So, if you think that piling up a bunch of tampons makes you a ‘better christian’ then go for it. (Isaiah 64:6) I prefer to not be a slave to sin. To not spend my days thinking about the things of satan (sinfulness) in my life or that of others, and instead focus on Godliness: loving god and loving others. Every single time I see a direction or command given by god or Jesus concerning sin it is not to make us more like Him, it is to enable us to be less like satan and to help us to ‘eat, drink and be merry’ for that is all that we have here on earth. If we live our lives doing the things we believe God
does not want us personally to do, we will not be merry. We will not have good lives. That is the purpose of avoiding sin. Will a tattoo make my life less enjoyable? For me, the answer is yes. I do not like them at all. On the other hand, if I felt God asking me to get one because it would help me reach others, then I would be miserable without one.
The minute you accept Christ, you are FILLED with the Holy Spirit and sealed as His until the day of redemption.
Nobody can take that way. Nothing can make you ‘lose’it.
No amount of sin will separate you from Him.
No amount of ‘Christlike’ behavior will draw Him closer to you or give you more Holy Spirit.
You are full, He is inside you. Period.
So stop telling me that teaching, drinking, homosexuality, promiscuity, etc make me less of a Christian.
They may make my life more difficult. They may make my witness less useful. Or they may just be exactly
what Christ needs of me to reach someone whom you think isn’t in your ‘sphere of influence’.
They may be the ones in twenty years who get hookers off the street, who reach homosexuals with Christ’s love, who teach others how to ignore your judgment and just look at Jesus.
I do hope someday that my daughter will be able to forget those who destroyed her love for Jesus. By being their version of ‘christian’ they showed her a Jesus that was mean, judgmental, hypocritical and angry.
May God forgive them when they stand before Christ and see how all their ‘holy’ deeds and enforcement of such ‘high
standards’ drove my baby away from the cross of forgiveness.
And may He shame those of you who believe that doing or not doing certain things determines who
is the ‘better christian’. How shameful and useless your faith has become. If you are one of those people, please unfriend me, because I will confront it if I see it. That is who God has called me to be. Not in anger. Not in judgment.
Not in hatred. He has called me to be a light in the darkness that we call ‘better christianity’ and when light shines into darkness it can seem blindingly harsh no matter how dim it is to begin with. I love sinners too much to leave them
trapped in your darkness when God has truth that can free them from the bonds of living in constant fear of failure.
If I have been one of those people in your life, which I know I have been more times than I can count, I beg your forgiveness. I pray that you also will find peace and happiness in being the you God created you to be and not take on the image of anyone else or their view of Christ.
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