I was taught to look at how people were dressed and what they did to determine if they were Christians. When things got really bad at my unhealthy church and people started shunning me, I started seeking fellowship online. I ended up in a group of people who were supposedly all from the same background as me, and I enjoyed being on there.
Soon after I started fellowshipping on that discussion board, I started to realize they did NOT all believe like me… and I started making a list. Those who were “hardliners” and “conservatives” like me, people I could trust on one side, and “liberals” and “backsliders” on the other side. People I couldn’t trust, people I needed to watch out for because what they said might make sense, but it was probably dangerous.
I began my list and worked on it for probably a week. As I did, I began to realize something: those on the “bad” side of the list were the kinder, gentler, humbler people, while those on the “good” side, the ones I would fellowship in real life, were often cruel. In an online environment, where I couldn’t judge everyone by their clothes, hair, or certain actions, but it was easier to see character and love, goodness, kindness, meekness, self-control and so forth, I gravitated to the “wrong” group-the liberals and backsliders-nearly every time. They were the ones who exhibited the fruit of the spirit. They were the ones who showed mercy and love.
I threw the lists away, stopped looking at people’s appearances, and started considering their hearts. Doing so changed my world.
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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