Critics and Laziness

I find it extremely easy to be a critic, someone who throws rocks at the houses others have built. It’s really convenient to sit in your recliner and make judgments over people, churches, organizations, pastors, etc. It’s really handy to critique a bad teaching or a church policy (such as a “seeker-sensitive” model), all done while sitting on your rear, and completely consign someone or something to the junk drawer of embarrassing, shameful, or cheesy Christian subculture. It’s a common practice among those that would wave the flag of American evangelicalism, or conservative Christianity. But I find a lot of it is complete crap, simply because I’ve done it so much and have sensed the emptiness and deception involved here. It is empty because it leads nowhere but to cynicism about church, Christianity, and those that may actually be doing a lot of good. It is deceiving because it makes you feel like you are a great Christian simply because you can poke holes so easily in another’s theology or church government or whatever.

What I’m not saying is that the standards for where you spend your church time should be lower, or that you should simply think it’s ok that people are spreading a lot of nonsense in churches that is not biblical or good. But I am saying that we probably shouldn’t be as concerned with judging the person and work of others, but more with judging ourselves and repenting by working hard to build something good, or by contributing and serving somewhere where it is needed.

I find it extremely difficult to be a builder of something, someone who helps build a house instead of standing back and throwing rocks at those that are working. I believe that is what Proverbs speaks of when it calls out the “sluggard” and the “scoffer.” It is someone who won’t pick themselves up off the couch, but will bark criticisms and scoffs at others that have put their hands to something. And it is someone who makes constant excuses for their own laziness: “There’s a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets” (Pr. 22:13)

While I do not advocate an attitude of ignorance and dismissal about those silly caricatures of what you could call “robust Christianity,” I also think that I should be hard-pressed to find much time for devotion to throwing rocks at them. Instead, I should pray for them, and perhaps do something to reverse the tide. I should be too busy loving them to tear them down.

On the other hand, they used to burn heretics…just kidding.