Jesus said "Blessed are you when men cast insults at you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely on account of me... Great! But what if what they say about you IS true?

eLi

I feel that sometimes as Christians we forget the word "falsely" in this scripture and think we have a free pass to do as we please. We seem to think that as Christians we can be right or wrong without any accountability. If the very world we are trying to reach makes an attempt to point out this hypocrisy we simply point to scriptures like this as justification for what really was our error of judgement. We tell each other and ourselves: "Oh they must be mad, cos we're telling them the truth and they don't want to hear it!."

We get hasty in our words and deeds and loose our credibility. Here is one example:

Recently a Christian broadcaster appeared to advocate the murdering of a foreign government leader on his TV program. One has to ask how credible would such a statement, to an audience of millions, be. It appears that he feels abortion is murder and yet we should go and kill people who might be our enemy. In response there was much criticism from the mainstream press. However let me ask the question. 'Was this criticism and bashing this person received an "attack from the enemy"? Was he being persecuted for a Christian message? Indeed was he doing it all under the direction of God and the Holy Spirit? (Personally I would counter this with another question: How many leaders did Jesus say we should kill?!)

Or perhaps people really are reacting to careless words wrongly spoken in the name of God?

Those of us who proclaim to follow Jesus Christ should do our best to walk in the humility of what Proverbs 29:20 says: "Do you see a man who is hasty in his words?
There is more hope for a fool than him."

It is clear that we people who claim to be Christians must remember they are accountable for what they say, NOT the rest of the world. We believe in a standard. WE are the ambassadors for Christ in this world. When we are careless with words, actions and people there are serious consequences.

Too often we are quick to claim immunity, but NOT responsibility! Remember we are justified by faith, not poor behavior.