Has being around, or the thought of being around, evangelical Christians caused you to feel nauseous, anxious, judged, inferior, condemned, gaslighted, confused as to your experiential understanding of love, needing a nice long hot bath to wash off the ick all the while thinking you need to run far far away from all that non sense and the one they proclaim, Jesus Christ? I hear you! I so hear you!
The problem is, the feelings listed above are what the Bible would call Bad Fruit and they ARE NOT from God and His son, the savior of the world. In fact, they are a Huge red flag that those people are not followers of Christ, but rather under a heavy cloud of deception.
How do I know this? Well, from the Bible itself. In John 13:34-35 Jesus Himself says “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
This statement by Jesus comes just after he took the lowly position and washed His disciples feet and just before He would be sent to be crucified, all the while praying for God to forgive those nailing Him to the cross because “they know not what they do.” In this He doesn’t say what love is, He shows that love is being humble and dying to self for others, others doing nothing to deserve it, and quite the opposite. It is action, not words.
There is no way that someone judging you, causing you to feel inferior, nauseous, condemned and feeling the need to Calgon it all away is someone taking a lowly position and dying to themselves; dying to being right, dying to preconceived notions, dying so that they might see and know YOU. And to be completely fair to them and us, that kind of Love is HARD. It does not come naturally or easily to us mere mortals…fallible humans that we are. That is the very point! It is only with Jesus’ supernatural help that we can begin to learn. It is a journey that begins with one step - turning to Him. This is why He came…to be our helper…to redeem us by His dying on the cross, in order to light the way to what love is by first loving us. Understanding and receiving that love He has for us is what fuels our lamps so that we can light the way for others. This is the Good News…the Gospel (good news) and what it means to truly be evangelical.
I think we can all agree that condemnation and judgement is NOT good news. That is a lot of the same old bad news. Condemnation and judgment are bad fruits. In Matthew 7:15-20 Jesus speaks to good and bad fruit: A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and likewise a bad tree cannot produce good fruit and “You will Know Them By Their Fruits.”
With this blog, and with Jesus’ help through the Holy Spirit, I want to share the good fruits of faith and The Good News of Jesus that I have learned is a gift for any willing to receive it and accept it. I could not have it if it were not for Jesus guiding me as I read The Gospel for myself without being told by other fallible humans what it means. I am fallible, too, which is why I encourage everyone to read for themselves and pray before hand that the true meaning behind what is written is revealed and not what they have been told it means.
In my life I have often been a Hesitant Prodigal, hesitantly ‘going my own way’ because of the damage that humans have done to The Gospel when all my heart and soul really wanted was Jesus and His Father. Perhaps this has been you, too…?
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