The original idea for this article and to a larger extent, this blog, was a message of anger towards many of the ideals that I had grown accustomed to as I grew up in the conservative South. These ideas have been floating in my head for several years now, but through a combination of laziness in not writing the article, and a change in attitude, it has become a message of love. However, the anger that has grown inside of me tends to come to the surface every once in a while, and for that I apologize.

Let me start with a little bit of background: I grew up in the Bible Belt, but unlike many other kids my age, I was not raised in church. If I ever went to church, it was because I wanted to go because I liked being with the other kids and I thought it was fun. So, every Sunday, my grandmothers would take turns taking me to their churches. Eventually, this led to my parents finding a church near our home and becoming members. As a result, I grew up a typical church kid, and it ruined me until I was almost out of high school. Don’t get me wrong, I had great adult leaders in my life, but this is my story and in order to share with you the things I have learned, I have had to undergo a transformation that could only be carried out by the Lord Himself.

For those of you that knew me from about sixth grade to sometime during my senior year of high school probably remember one thing: I was an insufferable douchebag. I mean an absolutely awful, hateful jerk. I was the reason other kids didn’t want to go to school the next day. I wish I could go back in time and curb stomp my former self. Nowadays, I teach seventh grade and nothing makes me angrier than when one of my kids acts similarly to how I used to act. And yet, during that time I was at church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and on Wednesday nights. So, the first logical question you may ask is, if I were such a good Christian (which I already was at the time, a Christian that is), how could I treat others with such hatred? Those days of my youth have haunted me ever since, and I have spent every day since then trying to make up for it.

So, this brings me to the main point of this post now that you know where I am coming from. I have since moved halfway across the country to a town in Kansas. You may ask yourself, “Why Kansas?” and I may ask myself the same question. I moved here for a teaching job, and it has been an incredible experience so far. The people here are truly excellent people and I am blessed beyond measure to have met them. However, the greatest blessing has been getting away from the ever-present distractions I found while trying to seek Jesus in a part of the country that is so caught up in their own self-righteous ideals that they have become the opposite of what they claim to believe in. (Oops, there’s that anger coming out again!) Many of you are probably thinking that I am placing blame on everyone else but myself, but I have already told you what I was like not so long ago. The difference is that I have accepted responsibility for my senseless hatred.

Not long after moving to this new city, I became friends with a married couple who told me they were planning to start a Bible study. I was a little hesitant at first because I still had a sour taste in my mouth from many people I had known that claimed to be Christians. However, after knowing them for only a short while, they seemed very different in that they weren’t caught up in the same political drivel that folks in the Bible Belt seem to be concerned with. They behaved in such a way that I knew regardless of what I or anyone else did, they cared about and loved everyone they had met. That is not to say I haven’t met truly loving people where I grew up, but meeting this couple is what really changed my message to one of love instead of the anger I had harbored for so long.

When we started Bible study, I was surprised to learn that all six of us had church experiences that made us resent the people we had been in contact with during our time there. My new friends shared their stories and I shared mine. I explained that the older I had gotten, the more and more I disagreed with what people in the church had to say about, well, almost everything. In the last few years, I have developed this thing where I can get along with basically anyone, but I had not known any homosexuals or atheists during middle and high school, and I would never have thought of associating with people that drank or smoked pot. But as I got older, things became more and more clear to me. Why don’t these people act like Christians? Well, interestingly enough, it’s because they are not Christians. And if I, as a Christian, refused to associate with them, what did that say about my beliefs? Could I truly believe in Jesus if I didn’t love the same people that he loved? I’m not dumb enough to think that disagreeing with a person’s lifestyle or choices is the same thing as hating them, but what I heard from local church members were hateful comments, very similar to things I had said to others in my days of middle and high school. This is when the anger inside of me started to well up. The hateful speech became more frequent, and I began to care less and less about attending church. I have never told anyone this next part. There was quite a long period of time where I considered myself anything but a Christian. Under no circumstances did I want to be a part of Christianity. I had even planned out how to tell my family and the people in church that I was leaving.

But for whatever reason, I could never do it. I spent nearly an entire year going back and forth, and I could never figure out what it was that kept me in the faith. So I waited. And waited. But what could it be that kept me from running as far from Christianity as I possibly could?

So, I told that to my new Bible study group and the others told of similar experiences, some of which were way worse than I had it. It really is a great relief to know that others out there have had some of the same struggles you have experienced. A few weeks into the Bible study, someone asked if we knew any way that we could save others from experiences like we had and, pensively, we all sat in silence. None of us could really think of a concrete answer to that question, and so we went home that night with many more unanswered questions than we had to begin with.

All right, children, I have a question for you! What is the ultimate goal of being a Christian?

To tell people about God!

No, little Johnny, stop giving me first grade Sunday school answers and give me a big boy answer. Yes, Emily?

To be a good person!

Oh Heavens, no…

To imitate Christ!

Oh, wow. Very good, little Justin! Sounds like someone has been reading Ephesians 4!

So with that in mind, the story continues. We left Bible study with those questions on our minds on a Thursday night. The next day was a pretty hectic Friday at school and my kids were rowdier than usual. One kid in particular, whom I love but has a problem with bullying others, was already starting to get under my skin at the beginning of my final class of the day. When my students were collecting their things to go home for the weekend, I called this kid out for bullying another kid who is supposed to be his friend. The friend told me the bully was just joking around, but I told the bully he was a jerk to a lot of people, which made him upset and rightfully so. This was the very last thing that happened before I went home for the weekend, and it ate at me the entirety of that weekend. My mind kept coming back to the questions that had been raised at Bible study the night before and that is when this message began to be laid on my heart.

So, my first question for everyone, whether Christian or non-Christian, is this: whose actions, ultimately, are we responsible for? Not responsible to, but responsible for. Think about it for a second. If the answer you have come up with is anything other than “I am responsible for my own actions,” then you need to think again. We are responsible for our own actions and that is it. And yet, many Christians have taken it upon themselves to become the moral police in regards to many social issues. But why? Speaking on a purely human level, how is it any of our business what other people do with their lives? Are we responsible for them? No! But what we are responsible for is how we treat them. People will log on to their Facebook accounts and whine daily about how our country is turning away from God and not even realize they are part of that problem! I didn’t want to leave the church because I had stopped believing in Jesus! I WANTED TO LEAVE THE CHURCH BECAUSE IT HAD BECOME A GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT CARED MORE ABOUT WHO SOMEONE HAD VOTED FOR IN THE LAST ELECTION THAN THE ACTUAL PERSON! (Oh, the anger is really coming out now.) And if I can put it in the nicest terms possible, it PISSES ME OFF! I am sick and tired of people getting on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Fox News and wherever else and spewing such hatred in the name of Jesus! If your concern with gay people getting married is because of the notion that it violates the sanctity of marriage, then why in the world is no one fighting to make adultery illegal?! I can guarantee you that adultery has violated many, many more marriages and families (including my own) than homosexuality has. This is not an argument for or against homosexuality but I am simply pointing out the inconsistency with which the supposed spiritual and moral leaders are leading. (Deep breaths…)

So… my challenge is to take back Christianity in the name of Jesus! Don’t become complacent and mistake political rhetoric of any kind for the kind of faith that is found in Jesus. Take responsibility for the way you treat others, and for the love of God, get to know a person before you even think to criticize their way of life, and if you do, do it in privacy and out of love (Galatians 6). According to Romans 3:23, we have all sinned. James 2:10 states that if you commit one sin, then you are a sinner and no one sin is any different than another (and it would benefit everyone to read all of James 2). So, you see, when you get on Facebook and moan about all the sinners, and gays, and atheists that are turning this country away from God, you may as well be moaning about yourself because neither you, nor me, nor anyone else is any better than the people we talk about! Sure, we are different, but it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with anything we have ever done or ever could do. We are colossal screw-ups, every last one of us. But the good news is that there is a way out and His name is Jesus. If you took my advice and read all of James 2, you will notice that it is our deeds that show our faith. It is what we do that shows what we believe in and unfortunately, many people that claim to be Christians are not only fooling themselves, but the rest of the world about what it means to be a Christian.

Now, to bring my ramblings full circle. We have established that our ultimate goal as Christians is to imitate Christ. So, I started wondering where the best place to start would be and I eventually landed on Galatians 5:22-23. For those that are unfamiliar, this is the passage that lists the Fruits of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the things that Jesus displayed every day. From lepers to Samaritan women to cripples to tax collectors to regular people, He LOVED them. And I have done a pretty crappy job of imitating Him thus far in my life, and if you were honest with yourself, I think most of you would admit the same thing. The problem is that growing up in church, more time is spent telling people the things you shouldn’t do rather than the things you should do. Don’t drink alcohol, don’t do drugs, don’t have sex, don’t swear are many of the common things you hear, but what happens when you spend more time telling a child all the things they should never do instead of the things they should do every day? Exactly!

In college, I learned about this idea Benjamin Franklin developed called the “The Perfectibility of Man” in which he listed thirteen virtues he felt every person should hold and display in his or her life. He would work every day in order to bring about what he called moral perfection in his life. Although this has nothing to do with Christianity, I think the same idea can be applied to the Fruits of the Spirit. Let’s look at the list of the Fruits again: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think if we were all very self-reflective, we would realize that we fail at pretty much all of these. So, what if we, as Christians, decided that in order to imitate Christ as best we can, we started working on displaying all nine of these Fruits in our daily lives, all the time with everyone we meet. Now, this isn’t going to be easy, and it’s going to be a process that will more than likely take most of us the rest of our lives. Are you ready? Pick one of them. I’ll start and choose gentleness because I feel like it’s the one I struggle with the most. So, starting right now I’ll begin by asking God to make me more gentle when speaking with and thinking about others. And I’ll practice it every day, in every encounter. Then, I’ll move on to the next Fruit. Don’t stress yourself out; take them one by one. It would be far too great a task to try and change all of these things about ourselves at once. When you feel that you have reached your goal for one Fruit, move to another. When you are at a point where you can show these things to others, regardless of how much they may disagree with your beliefs or even other Christians that annoy you, there will be no doubts in anyone’s mind that what you have is different. If you truly believe in Christ, then you will follow me in taking up this challenge.

I don’t bring this message to you from on high. I bring them to you from a place so low that I never want anyone to feel the way I have. These are the things I have learned. These are the things that will please Christ. If we work our hardest to imitate Jesus, then what others are doing will cease to matter, and the only thing that will matter is what we do in order to show them Christ’s love.

I will leave you all with one of my favorite quotes from Christian apologist GK Chesterton:

“If you do not understand a man, you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.”

Josh