critics

I am a great critic. I think all of us are to an extent. We are good at pointing out what is not right especially when it is in someone else's life. I guess that is why Jesus told us to look to what needs to be dealt with in our lives before we start becoming experts on the lives of others. He told us that because what is natural is the opposite.

In my line of work I live a public life. It is something that you have to get use to, everybody watches and comments about how you live, decisions you make, the way you lead. When you are the subject of that it tempts you to respond in the same way. But one thing that I am continuing to learn is that the more I see all that Christ needs to address in my life the less I am judgmental of others. I do not mean that I ignore God standards or that I accept any and every way of living as OK. It is just that the more I follow him the more patient I am with the imperfection of others. The more I realize that the reason so many people who were so unlike Jesus loved to be around Him is that he was patient with them, accepting of them, and yet bold enough to tell them that the life they were living was not going to give them what they were searching for...a radical change was needed.


Think about it, why is that the people who were most unlike Christ ("sinners", immoral, the tax collectors, etc) were the ones that most enjoyed him? I think that this is a healthy question to ask today's churches and to ask us who are Christ followers. Do we have that same effect on those who are far from God? Maybe we are spending too much time fixing what only God could fix in others instead of serving them, encouraging them, accepting them and thus directing them toward the only one that can change what needs to be changed.

I say all this to say that I have discovered the more you pursue him the more the way you view and respond to others will be heavily impacted.