Spiritual Survival Guide
6: Keeping It Going: Moving Beyond Survival Mode
Dealing with unreliable Christians is like being on a basketball team and finding out that half the guys on your team won’t bother to suit up. Or they’ll suit up, but once they get on the floor they won’t hustle, focus, or play defense. They treat it like it’s no big deal. It can drive you crazy, because you really thought you were a unit. You thought you were in it together. The truth is, we can get a lot more frustrated and let- down by our own teammates than by the other team! But other than demanding perfection and refusing to have anything to do with each other, what can do we do about that? There’s a passage in the Bible that talks about how judgment begins with the family of God (1 Peter 4:17). Jesus calls all of his followers to examine themselves first, and only afterward look at the faults of their brothers. Once we’ve done that (and that’s something we need to do every day), we can begin to make that family judgment call. (Check out Jesus teaching about the “speck” and the “log” in Luke 6:41-42.) There are at least three varieties of unreliable Christians in jail. The first group are the “fronters,” the false, deceptive, and counterfeit Christians. God knows what these brothers are really up to, but what- ever it is, it’s not following Jesus in any real way. The biblical model for dealing with these men is to lovingly but firmly confront them—to make it clear that they need to stop the phoniness. The second (and far larger) group of unreliable Christians are the weak and inconsistent ones. These are the brothers who get it one day and then seem to forget it the next. They’re like a great car with an iffy bat- tery. One day they’ll start right up, and the next day they’re completely dead. These brothers need a recharge, need to get a jump-start. Most of us are in this category sometimes, so the best approach to this group is a balance of both encouragement (a boost to their spiritual
energy) and accountability (a firm reminder that what we do matters). The final group of unreliable Christians are the immature and begin- ner Christians. These guys are like kids who are learning to ride a bike. You just have to expect that they’re going to be falling and crashing and making a fool of themselves. Becoming a follower of Jesus is a process of trial and error. Nobody gets it perfectly at first. And if you doubt that, then just read the Gospel stories and see how poorly Jesus’ first imma- ture and beginner disciples did. The best approach for dealing with beginners is to give them room to explore, to experiment, to try things out for themselves. They don’t need somebody standing off to the side laughing at them or angrily pointing the finger. But they sure could use some cheerleading, some help getting back up again when they fall, and some encouragement that they’ll get the hang of it one day. Of course, all of this raises the question: How do we know which per- son falls into what category? How can we tell if someone else is imma- ture, inconsistent, or false?
That’s a great question. And it doesn’t have an easy answer. In fact, Jesus’ first followers wondered about the same thing. And he told them a story (what is often called a parable) that ba- sically said, “Tread very carefully here. Give it time. You don’t want to stumble in with your judging and do more harm than good. God will sort the whole thing out when it’s time.” (See how Jesus put it in Matthew 13:24-30.)
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