They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love: Daily Thoughts from Mark (Mark 9:38-41)

It seems to me that the two biggest issues non-Christians have with the Christian faith are the issue of suffering and the issue of Christians themselves and how they behave.  We give non-Christians plenty of fodder for their cannons by our behaviors.  One of those behaviors is our separatist actions toward those fellow believers who do not think or believe the way we do.  We form denominations based on our view of how to baptize, who the Holy Spirit is and how He works, and a host of other doctrines.

We still haven’t learned what our Master, Messiah, taught us.

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward. (Mark 9:38-41, ESV) 

We are so prone to segment into competing groups, us and them, even among those who name the name of Jesus.  And because we share beliefs in common we make those beliefs the standard of right and wrong and the standard of superior worship.  This is our attempt, again, at meeting our own needs our own way for security and self-satisfaction.  It’s our way of affirming to ourselves that we serve Jesus better than y’all do.  It is so immature.

Of course, we aren’t saying those who baptize different from us are not believers, right?  I hope not.  Jesus said whoever gives us a cup of water because we belong to Messiah (yes, he outright claims that title) has a reward in the kingdom.  That person is one of us. 

If we hold in common with anyone that we serve Jesus the Messiah, that commonality trumps all others and makes us brothers and sisters, it makes us family.  There must be unity, not uniformity, in families, especially the family of God.  Within the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is not uniformity, but there is unity, and we take our signal from them about how to do family.  There is none of this immaturity in the Trinity that gets upset if One of them receives worship the other doesn’t.

Non-Christians are not right, necessarily, to judge Christianity by the failures of its adherents, but brothers and sisters, we will give them less cause to reject Christianity if we celebrate our family unity and give up our self-serving need to feel superior.