Articles
Have You Been Burned?
A little incident from my preschool days stands out in my memory. I happened to find a short length of electrical cord—a plug at one end and nothing at the other. It had been cut off of some appliance. Bringing it into the living room, I went to an outlet and plugged it in. Sparks flew from the severed end, and it was a long time before I plugged anything else in!
My wife Sara had a similar experience. When she was small, she plugged in a fan while her finger was touching the prong on the plug. It was several years before she plugged anything in again.
If we’re not careful, our thinking can be permanently short-circuited by an unpleasant experience. Encounters with dishonest auto mechanics may sour us toward anyone who works on cars. A woman who has been sexually abused as a child may be unwilling to trust any man.
But what happens when we get burned by someone claiming to be a Christian—especially if this happens more than once?
No doubt about it: There are frauds and pretenders posing as Christians. Jesus’ strongest words were reserved for hypocrites (Matthew 23).
But does the counterfeit negate the genuine? A few incidents of food poisoning, surely, will not cause us to stop eating, will it? We’ll just be more careful in the future.
Certainly we must be watchful for those who would prey on us in the name of religion, but we must also take care that we not allow these sorry examples to provide excuses for us. “Well, if that’s what Christianity is all about, I want no part of it!” And so the proverbial baby goes out with the proverbial bathwater.
“The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42 NASB).
Christ will take care of the hypocrites. In the meantime He expects each of us to do what He says, even if others don’t. Their failure to be true does not give any of us a license to excuse ourselves from His service.
