Chew On This!

A couple of days ago, I was stalking on my wife's Facebook page when I came across this quote from an Orthodox Christian: "We should try to live in such a way that if the Gospels were lost, they could be rewritten by looking at us."

Isn't that sobering? When unbelievers look at Christians, often what do they see or experience? Harsh, judgmental, critical, hypocritical, insincere, unloving, no different from me--these critiques are unfortunately true because we often think that the essence of the gospel is forgiveness, so the way we live is of no real consequence.

C. S. Lewis in one of his works defined a Christian as being a "little Christ". As Jesus said of himself, "If anyone has seen me, he has seen the Father." So if we belong to and are followers of Jesus, shouldn't we be able to say "If anyone sees me, he should see my Teacher"?

The Gospels (or the Gospel) certainly contain facts, but they portray a life, and a way of entering a new kingdom and taking on the character of the One whose life is portrayed in them (Luke 6:40). This life begins inwardly and has outward expression, and each of us is a "work in progress", but how much of our life merely reflects a church culture and not the life of Jesus?