A Religious Kidnapper! A Christian Slave-Breeder!
When King David of Israel committed the grievous sin of impregnating Uriah’s wife - Bathsheba, and later murdering Uriah, God sent the prophet Nathan to speak truth to power. David repented. “However,” Nathan declared, “because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die” (2 Samuel 12:14 NKJV).
There is this great evil when believers sin, in that it furnishes the enemies of God an opportunity to reproach Him and His people. David’s failure allowed the enemies of Yahweh to reason, “Since David is God’s man, and since David is an adulterer and a murderer, this God of David is not as holy as He claims to be.” So, God had to judge his servant king harshly. The death of his child, and all the other woes that befell David, was proof for all to see that the GOD of Israel does not countenance evil. Or we could say, God is displeased when our misdeeds make Him look bad in the eyes of the world, and He responds accordingly.
This is a precept we see repeated in the New Testament. In Romans 2:21-24, the apostle is reproving his fellow Jews: “You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? For ‘the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,’ as it is written.” Paul quotes from Isaiah 52:5. In essence the Lord is saying, “I called you to reach and teach the Gentiles in my name, but because of your sins the Gentiles blaspheme my name!”
In 1 Timothy 6:1, servants are called to consider their masters “worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and His doctrine may not be blasphemed.” And in Titus 2:5, the young women are exhorted to be good wives, “that the word of God may not be blasphemed.”
Every day in the news we see a world in dire need of the gospel of Christ. Our Master has called us to share the good news to all people throughout the world. We’re to be “fishers of men.” But here’s the rub: Like a splash on the water, our sins of omission and commission drive away the very same people we’re called to net for the Lord.
We can learn a lot from how my ancestors viewed the faith during their early encounters with "Christians." Historian John Franklin states in From Slavery To Freedom, “It was a strange religion, this Christianity, which taught equality and brotherhood and at the same time introduced on a large scale the practice of tearing people from their homes and transporting them to a distant land to become slaves. If the Africans south of the Sahara were slow to accept Christianity, it was not only because they were attached to their particular forms of tribal worship but also because they did not have the superhuman capacity to reconcile in their own minds the contradictory character of the new religion.” Are non-believers today stumbling over our contradictions?
In 1880, William Wells Brown attacked this brand of religious hypocrisy. He wrote in The Negro in the American Rebellion: “Great damage was done the cause of Christianity by the position assumed on slavery by the American churches…Think of a religious kidnapper! A Christian slave-breeder! A slave-trader, loving his neighbor as himself, receiving the sacraments…, then the next day selling babies by the dozen!”
My fellow American believers, during these turbulent times of pestilence, racial unrest and financial stress, it behooves us to be careful and thoughtful, and most importantly – we must be utterly biblical, lest the name of our God be blasphemed! We must never lose sight of the fact that the outward failures of believers give non-believers an open door to criticize our faith and our God! The enemy of our faith uses our sins like a vaccine to inoculate non-believers against our faith! A small dose of phony Christianity is enough to immunize the world against the real thing.
When the world looks at the church today, what do they see? I'm afraid they see our divisions and schisms, our obsession for political power instead of spiritual power, our over-emphasis of one truth at the expense of another! Does this attract them to our faith and our God? I don’t think so. We will disappoint our Lord greatly if we’re guilty of repelling the very same people we’ve been called to reach for Christ. And He will respond accordingly. For judgment will begin with the household of God (1 Peter 4:17). So, in closing I ask, how can Christians effectively share the good news to the world if the world sees us as the bad news?
Grace, Peace and Jahspeed!
Click on the book to order today!