How Not To Be An Arrogant Christian
You are on a ship. Dark freezing water is gushing in through a deep gash in its side. Its bow is dangerously low in the water and its stern is hovering too high above it for comfort. They told you the Titanic was unsinkable but denial is rapidly slipping further into the realm of impossibility. You and your friends are all locked away below decks. Children are crying. The fear and tension—the desperation in the faces of men, women and infants teetering on the edge of the cold, watery black hole of death—is solidifying in the air. Up the front near the stairs people are battling with the metal bars, hoping they will give way and let them out.
Then a familiar sound rents the air—someone is calling your name. Without thinking, you step forward and, without thinking, hundreds of blanched faces move aside for you. They look at you in wonder and, bewildered, you stare back. The gates open and someone guides you out, up and into the open air where you find a lifeboat waiting. As you step in, you turn around and take in the whole pitiful spectacle that would haunt the minds of the Western world for years to come. The boat is launched over the side and you row away as fast as you can manage. You are safe.
Whilst you look on in horror at the sinking coffin—whilst you shudder each time the oars bump against a frozen corpse, someone in your boat begins to laugh and shout. “You stupid idiots,” they call to the people in the water or waiting on the ship, “I can't believe how dumb you are compared to us! Fancy not getting on a lifeboat! Ha! Look at you—floundering around in the water desperately trying to stay afloat and keep warm! Ha! Good Luck!” Someone else joins in. You recognise that voice—he was the man who ordered the boat to be sped up when it was travelling through the ice field ...
There are few who would not consider the first mocker to be at best, deranged, and at worst, criminal. It seems completely nonsensical for him to take credit for being in any way superior to those who drowned; it shows the most callous indifference, even sadism, to ridicule their plight. Worst still, was the second mocker. He was responsible for ploughing the Titanic into the iceberg in the first place and we could easily be moved to concur with David's response to Nathan's story in 2 Samuel and exclaim, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!”1
And so do all of us! Every one of us has sinned2 and, in so doing, has made our little contribution to driving the great ship of mankind into the iceberg of damnation. We, like every other human being, were locked below decks, with no hope for the future, but only “a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”3 But one day God called us to take our place in his kingdom “out of darkness into his wonderful light.”4, when we were “by nature, objects of wrath.”5 Yet how easily we forget where we came from! How many times have we looked down on non-Christians as damned, sinful rebels? How many times have we considered ourselves to be better because we have responded to God's call? How many times have we ridiculed the other religions and worldviews that humans (being made in the image of God and designed to “reach out for him and find him”) are using the last vestiges of their god-given insight to cling on to with the desperate hope of the dying?
Brothers and sisters, this attitude cannot continue. It is exactly the behaviour that Jesus ridicules in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.6 It is Nebuchadnezzar,7 and the Unforgiving servant,8 rolled into one. It is wrong and it will drive others away from the kingdom.
Now I am not saying that ridicule and criticism of the world has no place. After all, the Bible writers used it. Talking about how terrible and pointless the Titanic disaster was would have made the people in the lifeboat realise how fortunate they were and convict those responsible for their guilt. In the same way, criticism and ridicule of the world can remind us of our sinfulness, help to convict people of their sinfulness, encourage us to persevere in “rowing” towards heaven and to praise the God who saved us from such a terrible fate.
However, whenever we condemn the world, we condemn ourselves, for we are describing exactly how we would be without God's help. Those who accuse Christians of being arrogant because we say “our God is better than yours” and “we are right and you are wrong” have a point. God is not our God and we are not the ones who are right. If we understand this and live by it, not only will we be more Godly and Christlike, but it could have incredible benefits for evangelism. Brothers and sisters, let us all resolve ourselves this week, to truly live like survivors of the Titanic who know that “it is by grace that you have been saved—through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.”9
Hannah Solomons
Notes
1 2 Samuel 12:5—Nathan told David a story about a rich man who took a poor man's only much loved sheep from him by force, even though he had many sheep of his own. This was an allegory of David's sin with Bathsheba.
2 Romans 3:23
3 Hebrews 10:27
4 1 Peter 2:9
5 Ephesians 2:3
6 Luke 18: 9-14
7 Daniel 4: 28-37
8 Matthew 18: 21-35
9 Ephesians 2:8-9
<< No Bible, No Breakfast? | Return to the Index | Miriam Chan >>