better than i was.

I had probably the most boring weekend of my entire life. We went to Houston to visit my grandma because she’s lonely and everything, so it was good that we were there and we lifted her spirits and everything, but her arm’s broken so we didn’t do ANYTHING all weekend long. She takes this medication that makes her sleep all day, too. I swear I watched more TV this weekend than I EVER HAVE in my ENTIRE LIFE. I hate TV, too. There aren’t many situations bad enough for me to sit down and watch it—well that goes to show you how boring this weekend was.

The only reason that I think I’ve always stayed on the good side of an unbeliever is because I’m careful not to treat them from a personal manner. Now, if we wanted to get personal, I could say a lot of things about any given person that I don’t like, but living as a Christian isn’t personal, is it? All you need to keep in mind about him is they doesn’t understand spiritual things, so trying to spur them on towards morality (whether in a loving way or not) isn’t gonna make sense. The ONLY way I’ve ever been able to get across to them is by sharing my personal experience—why I feel better off THAN I WAS before knowing Christ.

You ever heard the saying “We’re not better, we’re just better OFF” (relating to Christians and unbelievers)? Forgive me if you must, but on thinking about that saying and the context that it is often used in is often VERY OFFENSIVE. Here’s my spiel on it. Most often, people use the phrase in response to what kind of remark? One from an unbeliever saying something along the lines of “You Christians are so judgmental. You all just think you’re better than us.”

Pause there and think about it for a second. What’s going on in the unbeliever’s heart? Probably anger, right? They don’t understand spiritual things at all, so they’re thinking we’re just wearing the T-Shirt around to make them look bad, right? Most likely, remember I’m just using the “most often” scenario here…

So what’s the line fired back, “We’re not better, we’re just better OFF”. Read that again slowly. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? What’s the difference between “better” and “better off”. Think about it as a number line, positive numbers on the right, negative numbers on the left. If they were thinking mathematically (like I have the bad habit of doing), and I KNOW the wouldn’t be, they would see you putting them on the line as a “zero” or below because “we’re being judgmental”, right? So where would “better” or “better off” be? Above the zero. Doesn’t matter to them where, it’s above them. I conclude that when we say that, it’s offensive to the unbeliever and we lose ground.

Or maybe that doesn’t make enough sense. Try this. Ask yourself this question: “Is choosing Christianity logical?” You would say yes, right? It’s perfectly logical to choose to be saved and given eternal life and to choose hope, joy, and wisdom in a relationship with Christ, isn’t it? Well, what about to the unbelievers? Do they SEE these benefits yet? No, they are COMPLETELY DEAD spiritually. They don’t logically understand what we do or what we say. But we do. So, when we explain to them “We’re not better, just better OFF”, in our minds we’re right. We have hope, joy, and wisdom. But they only take it as an offense because they don’t get it.

So this brings me to my point. I seriously believe we’re supposed to be doing everything in our power to be evangelizing the unbelievers (and DON’T WORRY, I have a hard time doing it). I believe that in order to do that, we ought to be thinking very carefully about what we’re saying to them, being whether we are explaining things from our logic or theirs. And I scripture points out a humbling fact in Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace that we’ve been saved through faith. God did it all. It was not by our own works or by our own doing, because we’d be bragging about it.” If God didn’t feel gracious, we’d be lost. Everything’s controlled by God.