Guilt By Association

April 5, 2009 by Lisa Krempasky  
Filed under faith

There is a lot of guilt by association going on these days. Liberals prescribe motives and actions to conservatives. Conservatives do the same to liberals. Christians do it to atheists and atheists do it right back. It is a red herring and it is dividing us and it is wrong.

While it is true that you can generally prescribe tenants of the belief to a particular group, that is about as far as it goes. For instance, by definition atheists do not believe in God. However, it is not true that by definition they are bad people. There are definitely bad people who are atheists, but there are also bad people who do autrocities in the name of Christianity. Likewise there are good and pleasant and funny people who you would like as human beings who are atheists.

Please do not take this as my acceptance of atheist (or any other) belief. It is merely a recognition that we cannot impute motives or actions to an individual just because someone we associate them with takes those actions or has those motives…even if it is someone we associate them closely with. It is also a recognition that doing so is in direct contravention of God’s specific requirements that we not judge others lest we be judged.

Take the example of a family. There is a judge here in St. Louis that is Jimmy Hoffa’s daughter. That also makes her Jimmy Hoffa Jr’s sister. Those names conjure up specific images to many Americans. There is an immediate, and perhaps justified, rush to judgment when either male Hoffas are mentioned. But does that make the judge bad? Does that make her unfair? Corrupt? Of course not. She is none of those things. She is a good judge. Even though she lived years with men who conjure up many negatives, it is neither fair nor correct to impute things to her because of your views of her infamous family.

Why do I bring this up? God is after us individually and wholly. He is about the business of exposing our prejudices and biases to us so that we can be more fully like Him. We are at a time in this nation where it is not good enough to walk the Christian life we have always walked. As the old saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing things the way you have always done them and expecting different results.

Christianity can no longer be about us. It must be about God. It is time that we fall on our faces before the Almighty who loves us and gave Himself up for us and ask Him to gently reveal every area that keeps us from Him. We must yield our thoughts and our feelings. We must walk by faith and not by sight. And in doing so, in setting aside our rights and our presuppositions, we will find the peace and love of God that passes all understanding. In yielding to whatever His plan may be we will find true freedom, true power and true authority. And when we do that we will change the world. People will want what we have. When the atheist is your friend and you are walking in complete surrender to God you have knocked down barriers, maybe it is THE barrier that keeps them from God. Radical surrender is freedom. Radical submission is authority. Radical weakness is strength.

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