Compassion

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
Beecher, Willard

I have often written about judgement sometimes being necessary, but it is something that we must be very careful with.  You can judge someone without being mean. When we judge, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are sinners too! I am made ill by the nasty comments I often see by people claiming to be Christian.
I recently heard a story on the show “Gutsy Christianity” about a man who created a questionable piece of art. Christians from all over the area were protesting, send him death threats and one even came to the place it was being displayed with a tire iron and busted up the glass that protected the piece and ripped it up. Meantime a brand new Christian pastor was being pressured to make some comments about the “art”. Instead of flying off the handle he wrote a polite note to the artist asking him to interpret the piece for him.

It turned out that the piece wasn’t about Christianity in general, it was a statement on the sex scandle of the Catholic Church. This pastor and artist became friends.  The pastor asked the artist if he would create another piece depicting a more respected Jesus for this pastor’s church, and in the process of describing Jesus for the author he also shared the Gospel with the man. This artist hasn’t yet given his life to Christ, but he did present the Church with an awesome piece of art. Because of the kindness this pastor showed this man his outlook on Christianity is a lot more friendly then it was before, and multiple artist in his community are now Christians.

Hate chases people away from Christ. This man wanted nothing to do with a Christ that would endorse the kind of hate that was being aimed at him, by people claiming to be Christ representatives. But when faced with the Christ of compassion he became more compassionate, and so did many others.

Jesus isn’t just the God of love, he is the God of judgement as well. When we interact with the world we must do our best to be like him.
Judging when necessary, but NEVER overlook compassion.