Articles
Let Us Be Different
Christians are inherently like the world sometimes, in spite of our desire not to be! The world walks in and out of my office 8 hours a day, and part of my job can be summed up as 'Customer Relations' because there are issues, often times of a negative nature that I must deal with. Christians also need to be aware of how we handle the negative things that affect us.
You may have your own take on Police Officers right now, and I'll just use their current situation as an example. They are on the media hit list, and the media only shows us one side, negativity. If an officer, one in a thousand makes the news for some misconduct, they tend to paint police in general with that brush. Why can't we hear what the 999 did to help people, protect people, and the good that they did for a change? Why is the focus on the few missteps, and not the overwhelming positive aspects?
Negativity is the enemy of us all. Hypocrites in the church (and we are all hypocritical at times, regardless of who we are) get all the attention. The good done by the remainder of a congregation goes unnoticed, because that doesn't grab the attention of outsiders like the one person who messes up. And without a doubt, there are times when we are part of the problem, not part of the cure. We too, sit on the sidelines at times, contributing our opinion to the issues and we can easily get focused on the small fractions of negativity and miss overwhelming goodness of the bigger picture. I believe we are being programmed that way by the media, and whether their intent is to do that or not, it does seem to be the current trend.
I have a challenge similar to the graphic used today. Can we make an exerted effort as Christians, to find the good side, and talk about it? Can we not be like the rest of the world, and only spread the negativity that dominates the news cycle? Can we make an exerted effort to be different, and be noticed as being different so that people can see us and want some of what we have? Surely being positive and handling negativity properly will be noticed by those outside the body of Christ, and be a lure to them to pursue a life in Christ.
It won't be easy at all for sure, because we will be in a very small minority of people trying to do it. Social media will be against us, the media will be against us, many of the people in the circles we run will be against us, not necessarily in that they will turn against us for being positive, but in that they will still dwell on the negative, making our efforts much harder. But God will be for us, and Someone once used His Spirit to speak through the Apostle Paul who said "...If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rom 8:31)
