Clouds seen from my balcony.
I have made
the mistake of judging who is a Christian or not. I have thought or said, “Well,
they can’t be a Christian if they did or said that.” It is really an awful
thing to think that I am the judge of the world, but I used to.
I recently
read the following excerpt from the book, Mere Christianity, by C.S.Lewis. I
thought it explained exactly how our thoughts should be of people. It is so
natural for humans to judge other humans. We do this on how they look, what
they say and how they live. And it is actually important we do that in perhaps
the workplace or when choosing friends or a partner in life, but not when we
think of God’s work on the human heart. Here is the excerpt:
“The world
does not consist of 100% Christians and 100% non-Christians. There are people
(a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still
call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen (preachers). There are
other people slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves
so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ
but who are so strongly attracted to him that they are his in a much deeper
sense than they themselves understand.
There are
people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to
concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with
Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a
Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist
teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he
believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points.
Many of the
good Pagans long before Christ’s birth may have been in this position. And
always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind
and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together.
Consequently,
it is not much use trying to make judgements about Christians and non-Christians
in the mass. It is some use comparing cats and dogs, or even men and women, in
the mass because there one knows definitely which is which. Also, an animal does
not turn (either slowly or suddenly) from a dog into a cat. But when we are
comparing Christians in general with non-Christians in general, we are usually
not thinking about real people whom we know at all, but only about two vague
ideas which we have gotten from novels
and newspapers.”
