The Most Wrong

I was sitting in a salon recently when I heard a stylist nearby say something that caught my attention. She said, “The church is just full of hypocrites.” I was surprised that she said it so openly, without regard to any of the customers around her and their religious affiliation. Maybe she thought with all noise from the hairdryers and such, no one else would really hear her.

But I heard her, and her statement is something I have heard many times before. As a Christian, I wasn’t offended or shocked by what she said, though my first thought was to yell out at her, over all the noise, “There is always room for one more if you want to join us!”

Isn’t that the fundamental misunderstanding by the world about Christians? That we all think we are so right and as close to perfect as possible and know what is best for ourselves and everyone else.

Of course, we all know people who think like that. Their theology, beliefs and perspective are perfectly right in their view, and everyone else, even other Christians, are wrong if they do not agree with them completely. In their mind, others just simply are not as right as they are.

I know about this first hand because I used to be a Christian who thought like that and I felt a certain amount of pride about how right I was. When I look back on who I was in my younger years, I cringe at my arrogance and my disapproval of others who did not live or believe as I thought they should. I knew so little of the world but I thought I knew so much.

God, in his infinite wisdom, knew I needed to change. I wish I could say that my ways were not entrenched so deep that God did not need to do anything more than shake me up a little in order to get my attention. Not so. I was so sure of myself, my attitudes, and my beliefs, that all God could do was to bring me to the end of myself. He broke me into a million little pieces and all I could do was let him put me back together as he saw fit.

While God was putting me back together and mending my soul, the real truth of it all hit me. I am not a Christian because I am the most right. In fact, because of sin, most everything about me is wrong. If left to myself, my impulses, my desires, my thoughts, my words, and my feelings are all wrong. The only one who can save me from such sin and from myself is Jesus. I am a Christian and believe in Jesus because I am the most wrong.

Despite how wrong I really am the desire of my heart is to follow after God and be like Christ. That desire and how to achieve it is often what I talk about with others. That probably makes me a hypocrite, because while I talk about wanting my life to be hidden with Christ in God, the truth is that I am not very good at doing so. It is a challenge every day to leave my self behind and choose God’s way, and one in which I fail more than I succeed. But I take comfort in knowing that growing in Christ is a lifelong journey, and that if each day or week or month, I am a little bit more like Christ and a little bit less of a hypocrite, then God is pleased and His work in me is being done. And until His work in me is complete, I do know one thing for sure: if there is any good in me, Jesus made it so.

By Taylor Martin Wise, Copyright 2009