Must Believers Surrender Their Sippy Cups?

A pastor friend of mine has officiated hundreds of marriage counseling sessions. He shared with me that in each and every case, they all came down to the same fundamental issue.

For the first forty minutes he would patiently listen to the complaints and concerns of the embittered husbands and wives. Then, when each had their full say and the timing was right, he would ask of both of them one simple question:

“So…which one of you is going to be the adult?”

In many ways, the same question can be asked of Christians in their interaction with non-Believers.

Despite passage after passage in scripture describing the unfair advantage we, as the chosen ones, have when it comes to understanding Truth, we put unreasonable expectations on our mission field.

After all, we have the completeness of spiritual transformation, the Holy Spirit serving as our personal Bible tutor and the promise of life everlasting. You would think we would be grateful and share a tenderness to those who have not yet walked through that door.

But instead, we judge the world harshly, clanging our cymbals before retreating to huddle together in our safe houses.

Think it’s not true? How welcome would a homeless person be walking into most churches? What about the teenagers who show up to youth group bearing the stench of cigarettes, foul language and screaming tattoos. Yes, Jesus loves them. But do we really want them around our kids? Isn’t outreach supposed to happen…well…out there somewhere?

Then there is the political arena where the Christians are now eating the lions.

We place salvation as a feather in our cap as if we earned something. We want people to know what we did, and unfortunately, lost is the true message of Who did it to us.

It was Jesus himself who on the point of being beaten to death said this of his tormentors: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

The problem for most of us Christians is that we’re unwilling to take the lashings. After the first blow, we come out swinging. By doing this we slip into enemy territory and our witness becomes missing in action.

We rage against the system, the world, the economy, political parties, our boss, until we’re…we’re just mad. This is despite the fact we already know how the story ends.

Although we are to call one another to a high level of accountability, we are commanded to love those around us with the same grace and compassion we received.

Which means at some point, and hopefully soon, we have to answer the question:

“So…who is going to be the adult?”

Want more of Michael? Check out What You Have Is What The World Needs

Learn more about the author Michael K. Reynolds