Letter from a friend

This is a letter to my readers from an anonymous friend of mine.

"I’m not a Bible scholar. In fact, I don’t know much about where I can find certain verses or stories in the Bible, but there are some things that I do know. The most important one being that as Christians, it is our job to love as Christ loves. It is not our job (It never has been, nor will it ever be) to judge others. Now, when I say that it is our job to love others, I mean that it’s our job to love our fellow Christians as well as non-Christians.

I guess that’s one of the biggest problems I have with the Christian world today. All too often Christians are taking the concept of holding one another accountable to the next level. Now don’t go thinking that I think there’s something wrong with holding one another accountable because, in fact, I believe that Christians need to be held accountable in our actions. The problem that’s happening, though, is that instead of holding one another accountable in love, Christians have taken to judging each other when they do fall.

Not only do I have a problem with the fact that Christians have taken to judging each other when they fall short of being perfect (Sorry to have to burst everyone’s bubble, but none of us will EVER be perfect. That’s why we need Jesus. Sorry, folks.), I have a problem with the fact that Christians aren’t reaching out to other non-Christians. What is our job here on earth? To spread the gospel. To reach out to those who are hurting. If we separate ourselves from the rest of the world and ONLY surround ourselves with other Christians, we are NOT fulfilling our duties as Christians.

Don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying that we should only ever associate with non-Christians because that’s not true. Remember what I said earlier about the importance of holding each other accountable in love? We need that, but we need to be reaching out to others. If we constantly surround ourselves with only Christians will we ever reach anyone? No. I think it’s very important to have a solid foundation of Christian friends to support you and love you no matter what, but you need to make sure you are feeding God’s other children, too. If Christians are too busy with their other Christian friends who’s reaching out to others and spreading the gospel? No one.

I guess my whole reason for writing this is to emphasis the importance of loving each other. Loving Christians and non-Christians. We should never judge each other. We should love each other. We should know that our other Christians will stumble, they will let us down, they will hurt us. It’s inevitable. They’re imperfect just like we are, but that’s why we are supposed to forgive each other just like Christ forgave us. It’s also just as important to remember that just because we’re Christians does not make us better than anyone else. God loves everyone, and we should love them like he does. If non-Christians don’t see the love of Christ through us, why will they have any desire to become Christians themselves?

Once Christians understand this, they need to understand that we need to be reaching out to others. We need to be supporting each other and helping each other make those steps towards reaching out to others. If not, we’re basically encouraging our fellow Christians to stumble because they have no one to support them. If we let them venture off into the “un-Christian” world alone, they will stumble. It will happen. We need to be supporting them and help them and not judge them.

I don’t know if this has made sense. Like I said, I’m not a Bible scholar, and I’m not an English major either. The only thing I do know is that God loves me, and that it’s my job to show that to everyone else around me, too. If not, why am I here on earth? "