Cast the First Stone

 

A lesson God has been teaching me since I've been in prison is how to look at people through His eyes. The more He teaches me on this subject the more frustrated I get at members of the Body of Christ who continuously push people away from Christ because of their refusal to try and see people through His eyes. There are people in here that RUN from anything to do with Jesus because Christians who claim to follow Him show anything but Christ like behavior. As a society we look at sins and break them into categories of bad, worse, and heinous. While its true some sins are more disgusting than others, looking at people and displaying judgmental behavior or refusing to even talk to someone because of what they did is nothing like Jesus. 

For example, if a man just released from prison showed up at church and you heard gossip all morning about him serving time for molestation, would you want him sitting next to you in service? Much less, would you go out of your way to speak to him and find out if he has been saved through that horrible situation? Or would you do like so many Christians and distance yourself, refusing to even talk to him because of what he did? 

Paul persecuted and killed Christians and God turned him around and used him. There should be absolutely nobody on this planet we aren't willing to speak to just because of their sin. As a church, when are we going to understand God views all of our sin in the same light? He doesn't look at a child molester and say they require extra of Jesus’ blood to cover their sin or look at your sin and say you need less of His blood because your sins are “minor” in comparison. 

Do you feel confident you've never committed adultery and never would? In turn, does this make you feel like you have the right to judge a couple being gossiped about in church for going through counseling after one committed adultery? When the Bible clearly says if you’ve even so much as looked at another with lust in your heart, then you’re guilty of the same sin. 

 Matthew 5:27-28 "you have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."  

Maybe you’ve never actually committed the act of adultery like the couple struggling with the problem you’ve gossipped about. But, you are just as guilty according to Jesus himself. This judgmental behavior has to stop. We all say we want to reach people and bring them to Christ. But we drive them away in droves by our behavior. I've seen first hand how powerfully God can use one conversation with someone whose been shunned by society, disowned by family, and left out of conversations in here because of what he did. After being excluded for so long, just a conversation with him about his testimony and struggles left him shocked that another inmate and myself cared enough to even let him sit with us and talk.

Because of his sin, he was turned away by his church. No prayer, no counseling, no help for seeking repentance. Just forced to leave and told he was no longer welcome.  If we don't stop cherry picking what sins are “accepted” and which ones aren't we won't reach all that God has for us to reach. 

Ask anyone who's been driven away from church and one of the number one excuses I've heard is that the church is full of hypocrites. Until we accept that as fact and try to change the way we are treating people, no progress will be made. 

I admit, I couldn’t bring myself to sit and talk to some of these guys when I first got here. But, slowly I've noticed God working in my heart to take steps in the right direction in my attitude toward these guys. From what I've heard about a couple situations back home, we could do better as a church. Stop the gossip, stop the judgemental attitudes towards people that are dealing with different struggles than you. One of Satan's biggest weapons is using Christians to drive people away from church and unfortunately he doesn't even have to work that hard to do it. We make it easy for him.

The minute we can't look past someone's sin or we view their sin as worse than ours, I believe we’ve missed the entire point of what Jesus did for us. As hard as it is for us to accept it in our own understanding, no sin is any less deserving or any less covered by Jesus’ blood than another. 

Kindness is contagious and so is a toxic attitude. Kindness spreads like wildfire to people that are used to nothing but toxicity.  We have shared food and seen inmates you would expect to take the gift and eat it themselves, turn around and pass to another friend, sharing the same kindness that was extended to them.

Kindness towards an unsuspecting christian has shown fruit in here too. Let's offer help to those we don't feel like should be helped, cut out the negativity and see how God uses that. When I help someone that I don't want to help in here or talk to someone I don't want to talk to, each time God gives me something good and encouraging to take away from the conversion that ends up helping me just as much as them. 

One exercise we try to do is when you have a negative thought about someone, turn around and try to name three positives about the person. That helps minimize the negativity. Let's not make it easy for Satan to use us. We don't need an opinion about everything and everyone. Read Jonah to see how off putting adding our opinions into what God wants us to do can be. I'm guilty of it myself but I'm praying for change in that area. Im also praying for other believers because it is a widespread problem nobody wants to own up to. Not one soul needs to slip through the cracks because of our Jonah type attitudes towards people.