5 Dumb Things Christians Need To Stop Doing
The life of Jesus was and will always be counter-cultural. But often, it seems, we’re not ridiculed or rejected because we’re living such radically loving and selfless lives, it’s because we actually live so little like Jesus.
In this episode, Caesar looks at 5 dumb things that Christians need to stop doing that are affecting our witness and our discipleship efforts. And he gives a little of the gospel “thing behind the thing” with each of these issues.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- Why we need to be careful with what we say online.
- How even our most loving actions can be misunderstood.
- The things that Jesus got angry about (are you?).
- How the way we handle conflict reflects our faith.
From this episode:
“The world has a judge and it’s not you! Remember, God has both judged and punished all human sin on the cross. It is finished. That’s what Jesus said. It is finished. Do you believe that? So let’s stop judging everyone, both inside and outside the church. Let’s start loving them. And let God be God.”
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Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Free Download of the Big 3 For Episode #348
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Discipleship and Missional Resources
Transcript
The life of Jesus was in will always be counter-cultural the good news of the gospel, even when powerfully modeled and proclaimed God, John, the Baptist, the apostle Paul Jesus and the prophets all killed many.
Caesar:We'll never understand why our Christian lives and views informed by the gospel are so different from everything else they see and experience.
Caesar:around them
Caesar:But often it seems we're not ridiculed or rejected because we're living such radically loving and selfless lives.
Caesar:It's because we actually live so little, like Jesus, let's be the same people everywhere we are.
Caesar:And with everything we say, let's stop hypocrisy of having different personas.
Caesar:Or weird levels of engagement in different arenas of life.
Caesar:All of the one another's found in scripture, like love one another bear with one another, encourage one another.
Caesar:Do not judge one another, et cetera.
Caesar:All of those one another's found in the new Testament apply whether at your dinner table on social media or at a neighborhood, barbecue, be sure your words build up rather than tear others down.
Announcer:Welcome to the Everyday Disciple podcast where you learn how to live with greater intentionality and an integrated faith that naturally fits into every area.
Announcer:In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle.
Announcer:This is the stuff your parents, pastors, and seminary professors probably forgot to tell you.
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Announcer:Kalinowski
Caesar:all right.
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Caesar:Recently, I read an article by Carey Nieuwhof and he's a pastor writes a lot of great stuff that kind of tweaks my head at times, very articulate and I was moved by it and I wanted to use his thoughts and outline as a springboard to talk about some of the same things, five dumb things that Christians, we all need to stop doing because they really affect our witness, our discipleship.
Caesar:And I want to also talk about little bit of , the gospel.
Caesar:Behind all of it, the thing behind the thing with each of these issues.
Caesar:So here we go.
Caesar:Thanks again to Carrie new Hoff.
Caesar:For these, some of these ideas I'm even going to quote him in spots.
Caesar:Here's the first one of all the five dumb things we need to stop doing.
Caesar:Stop being so absurd online.
Caesar:Too many Christians come across online as either haters cynical, or just too darn syrupy.
Caesar:You know, they're haters that are the angry ranters, there's trolls.
Caesar:There's the theology police out there that have to try to correct everybody in everything they're arguing with anyone who doesn't agree with them, or you don't agree with what that person is.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:Don't come off like a hater that, why are you doing that?
Caesar:Stop?
Caesar:Let's stop that or cynical.
Caesar:Yeah, I know.
Caesar:Everybody's disappointed with everything all the time.
Caesar:No one gets it as right as you do.
Caesar:Oh yeah.
Caesar:Or the syrupy Christians online.
Caesar:It's everything so sweet.
Caesar:It's like you live inside a Christian hallmark card or precious moments display.
Caesar:Yeah, no one needs more of that.
Caesar:Why does so many Christians think that their social media feeds are a place to show the world, their unfiltered, weirdness and strong opinions?
Caesar:Why is that?
Caesar:I bet it gives others online.
Caesar:The impression that if they're going to follow Jesus, they're going to need to become socially awkward too.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:It's not helping.
Caesar:Here's the thing, if you think, well, people would just walk out of the room.
Caesar:If I said that or brought things up like this in real life.
Caesar:Well then maybe you shouldn't say it.
Caesar:I think that so many people get online and then they get brave and they kind of hide behind that and maybe even have false profiles.
Caesar:If you do that, delete that.
Caesar:Now that's just lying.
Caesar:That's just being weird.
Caesar:If you're angry or cynical, or all you do is complain online and you think, well, I wouldn't want to be friends with someone like that in real life.
Caesar:Then that's a clue that maybe you shouldn't say it or be like that.
Caesar:Well, what do you think?
Caesar:But I know some of your thinking.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:But Jesus got mad.
Caesar:There is such a thing as righteous indignation.
Caesar:We've got to stand up for some stuff.
Caesar:Okay.
Caesar:Sure.
Caesar:Jesus did get angry at times.
Caesar:But what did Jesus get upset about?
Caesar:I'll look, he got upset about hardness of heart.
Caesar:You can look in mark three, a selfish ambition and people mark eight spiritual arrogance among his own disciples.
Caesar:Luke nine self-centeredness Matthew 23.
Caesar:Here's a biggie.
Caesar:This really upset Jesus was hypocrisy and fake religiosity . Yeah.
Caesar:that's from Luke 11.
Caesar:See, try as you might, you won't find any passage where Jesus got mad at sinners for being sinners.
Caesar:You will however, find him getting angry with so-called righteous or religious.
Caesar:And by the way, you will find Jesus spouting off about Rome or the emperor.
Caesar:He simply reminded his followers that his kingdom is not of this world, which leads us to number two, stop arguing about politics.
Caesar:They're online or in general, part of the general creepiness with a lot of Christians is political.
Caesar:Just think about this.
Caesar:God is not a Republican or a Democrat.
Caesar:He's not a conservative or liberal.
Caesar:God is God.
Caesar:He always does what is good.
Caesar:Right.
Caesar:And perfect.
Caesar:Be careful because when you or your church becomes a mouthpiece for a political party, I think you ceased to be the church.
Caesar:Our job is to share the gospel, making disciples of Jesus, not to change the government.
Caesar:Here's what Carey himself said about this.
Caesar:He says having a government that doesn't embrace the churches value line for line actually puts Christians today in some great company, the company of the earliest followers of Jesus.
Caesar:Jesus spent about zero time asking the government to change during his ministry.
Caesar:In fact, people asked him to become the government and he replied, like I just mentioned this kingdom, his kingdom is not of this world.
Caesar:And you know what else he goes on.
Caesar:He says the apostle Paul appeared before government officials regularly.
Caesar:Not once.
Caesar:Did he ask them to change the laws of the land?
Caesar:Hmm.
Caesar:Food for thought, right.
Caesar:And I know some will say, well, God has opinions about things happening today.
Caesar:Yep he does.
Caesar:But when authentic Christians sincerely share different views on subjects, we should be very careful about claiming to speak for God.
Caesar:We need to stop obsessing over being right and acting like we have all the answers.
Caesar:Remember, God is great.
Caesar:So I, we don't have to be in control.
Caesar:Well, let's start focusing a lot more on following Christ's example, sacrificial living, helping everyone in need, comforting, loving everyone around us, but I'm afraid for Christians.
Caesar:It's often easier to yell and complain.
Caesar:Oftentimes hidden away online instead of doing the very hard and humble work of loving people, people are messy and Jesus loved every one of them, including you and me.
Caesar:And I know arguing is sort of addictive because it feeds off of our need for self glorification.
Caesar:Self-righteousness pride recognition.
Caesar:Be careful about that.
Caesar:All right.
Caesar:Here's number three, stop handling conflict so poorly or avoiding conflict all together.
Caesar:I think the church should be the best in the world at handling conflict.
Caesar:Jesus taught us exactly how to do it.
Caesar:Remember in Matthew 18, where he says, if another believer sins against you go privately and point out the offense.
Caesar:If the other person listens and confesses it, you've won that person back back to relationship.
Caesar:But if you're unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three women.
Caesar:In other words, that way there's clarity of exactly what was said.
Caesar:And Jesus goes on and says, if the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church.
Caesar:Now that doesn't mean to the church service, who who's the church, what's the church to people, to the community that does life on life.
Caesar:With that.
Caesar:Then if he, or she won't accept the church's decision, the body, the people treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.
Caesar:And by the way, how did Jesus treat pagans and corrupt tax collectors with love with patients with come and follow me?
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:So we've taken and distorted this where Jesus made it real clear for us.
Caesar:Do your best to be careful go personally to that person.
Caesar:If that's not working, bring another couple of trusted friends that that person trusts.
Caesar:And so do you.
Caesar:And if that doesn't work and the community can't convince them, then treat them with great love with great patients as if they're like an unbeliever.
Caesar:I hope that's how we would treat unbelievers in.
Caesar:Certainly it's how we get to treat each other within the family of God within the church, but way too often, we sidestep where we avoid conflict altogether, which the thing behind the thing there that's self-love, which is sin.
Caesar:We won't speak the truth face to face with someone because, well, it's awkward for me and I don't like conflict.
Caesar:Or what if they're not happy with me and see my highest value is that I need to be loved and liked by everyone.
Caesar:So I won't go to them like Jesus suggests and say, Hey, thank you, sin against me here.
Caesar:And this is how it hurt.
Caesar:So sometimes we just avoid it.
Caesar:Like, again, that's self-love or we won't talk to that person.
Caesar:We just gossip.
Caesar:We talk about other people rather than to people, which is also sinfuland selfishness.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:Or sometimes we'll run over people claiming to know the truth.
Caesar:We'll just hammer them.
Caesar:Like, like I was saying, when a lot of people do that online, well, we also do it face to face.
Caesar:We just sort of explode on people because we claim to know the truth.
Caesar:And by the way, that truth will set you free.
Caesar:And there's not a relationship of trust.
Caesar:There's not enough invitation, banked that we can actually approach something.
Caesar:That needs to, and maybe if it's a little stickier, a little harder to address that takes love, that takes time and patience.
Caesar:That takes a lot of prayer, but without this, if we handle conflict within the church, so horribly, why would anyone want to join our family?
Caesar:Why would anybody want to be on this team who needs that type of relationship?
Caesar:We were all, all of us humans all created to live in grace based environments.
Caesar:Thy kingdom come.
Caesar:They will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Caesar:That's the church.
Caesar:That's the kingdom come.
Caesar:We are to be living as a little outpost to that kingdom.
Caesar:So let's try to do a better job at handling conflict and loving people.
Caesar:Well enough to do that.
Caesar:Now, number four, with the five dumb things we want to stop doing here's Christians can hurt in our team, hurting our witness out there.
Caesar:Number four stop selectively ranking sin.
Caesar:Christians often seem to be pretty good at focusing on the moral failings of others.
Caesar:Well, mostly ignoring their own, any sin that someone else is committing in your eyes, but you're not committing.
Caesar:At least currently you've got to go after that, got to get after that there are whole strains of Christianity.
Caesar:They think that's their goal.
Caesar:This is sin management.
Caesar:Get after that.
Caesar:And everybody else primarily.
Caesar:And while we're at it, we usually have a lot more grace for our own sins than we do with those people that were going after their sin.
Caesar:God got to get after it.
Caesar:And in this bugs me too often, we act like the worst sin, someone can commit is a sexual sin.
Caesar:And yeah, for sure sexual sin can have very serious implications, but so does gossip and divisiveness.
Caesar:And fighting sins that Christians routinely participate in than sort of sweep under the carpet.
Caesar:Like it's normal.
Caesar:I would suggest that just as many churches have been ruined by gossip and divisiveness and fighting coralling as have been affected by sexual sin probably way more.
Caesar:And certainly we need to surrender our sexuality to Christ.
Caesar:But I'm also for submitting our propensity to gossip and divisiveness and our greed submit all that to Jesus in dealing with all of that.
Caesar:Seriously.
Caesar:Here's the thing.
Caesar:God has both forgiven and forgotten all of your sins and everyone else's.
Caesar:That's what scripture teaches that your sins have been put as a FA as far away as the east is from the west.
Caesar:We get a beautiful picture of that in the whole tabernacle system.
Caesar:With the two goats, one goat was sacrificed for the sins of the people.
Caesar:The second goat, all their sins were confessed put on its head and the net goat was led away.
Caesar:Never to be seen again.
Caesar:Jesus paid for your sins.
Caesar:Every last one of them on the cross and God in his grace, in his mercy has not only forgiven you and everyone else, but he has chosen not to remember them.
Caesar:It's like when he sees you or your neighbor or whoever, he's like, well, w what sin, what, what sins?
Caesar:He just sees.
Caesar:Jesus.
Caesar:He doesn't see you as the person who use to.
Caesar:Fill in the blank dot, dot, dot dot.
Caesar:But you know, I forgave him of that or a former fill in the blank.
Caesar:God just loves you as a dearly loved daughter or dearly loved son.
Caesar:Let's stop ranking others' sins.
Caesar:And then using that sin to divide us, we all need Jesus exactly to the same degree, which is fully and that leads us to this next and last one that I'll talk about today.
Caesar:Number five, stop judging those outside the church.
Caesar:This one turns a lot of people away from Christians from the church itself, capital C globally.
Caesar:And unfortunately, Jesus, it turns people off of Jesus.
Caesar:Again, carry new Hoff states.
Caesar:It's actually strange to ask non-Christians to hold Christian values.
Caesar:Hm.
Caesar:I can remember my son saying the same thing to me.
Caesar:He's an attorney and he's done a lot of federal law and he says, dad, it's not even something you should expect.
Caesar:Why would they?
Caesar:Carrie says, as the Barna group pointed out in a lot of different studies, growing number of people are post-Christian.
Caesar:Yeah, that's true of us.
Caesar:The question Christians living in a post-Christian culture have to ask themselves then is this, why would we expect non-Christians to behave like Christian?
Caesar:For instance, if you believe sex is a gift from God to be experienced between a man and a woman within marriage, why would you expect people who don't follow Jesus to embrace that in the same way you do?
Caesar:Why would we expect people who don't profess to be Christians, to wait until marriage to have sex or live together, or be faithful to one person for their entire life?
Caesar:Or clean up their language and aspects of their lifestyle that aren't in line with the Bible, or why would we expect them to pass laws like the entire nation was Christian.
Caesar:Seriously.
Caesar:Why most people today in this increasingly post-Christian culture are not pretending to be Christians.
Caesar:So why would they adopt our Christian values and morals?
Caesar:We in the modern church have largely ignored Paul's instruction.
Caesar:In the new Testament to stop judging non-Christians even Jesus said he didn't come into the world to judge it, but to save it, I completely get the urge to judge my neighbors and even the world, things bother me too.
Caesar:I understand that.
Caesar:I feel that angst at times if only this, or if only this group of people would understand this or stop doing that, but I have to refrain.
Caesar:I cannot put myself in the place of God in their lives.
Caesar:Our faith in Christ and his completed work on the cross demands that, Hey, Christians, the world has a judge and it's not.
Caesar:You remember, God has both judged and punished all human sin on the cross.
Caesar:It is finished.
Caesar:That's what Jesus said it has finished.
Caesar:Do you that?.
Caesar:So let's stop judging everyone, both inside and outside the church.
Caesar:Let's start loving them.
Caesar:Let God be God.
Caesar:All right.
Caesar:I know that some of that could be a little hard to hear, but maybe we need to hear it.
Caesar:I know with some of these, I certainly needed a little reminder.
Caesar:Maybe that's why that article from Carrie hit me so hard.
Caesar:Food for thought for sure.
Caesar:Now, before we take off, I want to give you the big three takeaways from today's talk.
Caesar:If nothing else, you don't want to miss these.
Caesar:And in case you're out driving or you're on a walk or you're at the gym or whatever, you can get a printable PDF of this.
Caesar:Week's big three as a free download by going to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash big three Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash big three.
Caesar:Now, here are the big three for this.
Caesar:First the life of Jesus was in will always be counter-cultural the good news of the gospel, even when powerfully modeled and proclaimed got John the Baptist, the apostle Paul Jesus and the prophets all killed many.
Caesar:We'll never understand why our Christian lives and views informed by the gospel are so different from everything else they see and experience.
Caesar:But often it seems we're not ridiculed or rejected because we're living such radically loving and selfless lives.
Caesar:It's because we actually live so little like Jesus, number two, we were created and live for the purpose of showing others what God is truly like glorifying our God, ask yourself, are your words, attitudes, and opinions in line with that?.
Caesar:Remembering James one 19 to 20, it says my dear brothers and sisters take note of this.
Caesar:Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
Caesar:It was true back then for Jesus' own disciples.
Caesar:It's still true for us today.
Caesar:Number three, let's be the same.
Caesar:Everywhere we are.
Caesar:And with everything we say, let's stop the hypocrisy of having different personas or weird levels of engagement in different arenas of life.
Caesar:All of the one another's found in scripture, like love one another bear with one another, encourage one another.
Caesar:Do not judge one another, et cetera.
Caesar:All of those one another's found in the new Testament apply whether at your dinner table.
Caesar:On social media or at a neighborhood BBQ.
Caesar:Be sure your words build up rather than tear others down.
Caesar:Okay.
Caesar:I hope that was encouraging.
Caesar:Hope.
Caesar:That's helpful.
Caesar:Maybe it's a bit convicting.
Caesar:That's okay too.
Caesar:I'll leave you in the hands of the holy spirit, but time's up for today.
Caesar:I hope you'll join me next week.
Caesar:We're going to continue to look at how the gospel speaks into absolutely every area of our see you soon.
Announcer:Thanks for joining us today for more information on this show and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit Everyday Disciple dot com.