This blog entry is not a recantation of my Ruffle Some Feathers blog entry. Nothing that was said in that blog entry was inaccurate. Jesus and His apostles constantly ruffled the feathers of the Pharisees. Everything Jesus did He did deliberately to upset them. It was as if He was giving them a reason to want to crucify Him. Perhaps I should have been more clear in stating that it is with the religious—the cults, the false religions, and the heretics—that we need to be ruffling feathers. When it comes to a brother or sister in Christ who is merely ignorant or does not know better, there is no need to ruffle their feathers but to gently correct and lead them. Even if you do not intentionally mean to ruffle their feathers, when you speak the truth to them (whether in love or not) they will still get bent out of shape about it. It does not matter what you do in life or how you do it, there is always going to be someone who is offended in one way or another.
I have no affinity for Mark Driscoll in the
least, but he said something once that is worth repeating. Christians should do
the following (every one of these can be backed by Scripture; most of them
performed by Jesus and His apostles):
Feed the sheep.
Rebuke the swine.
Shoot the wolves (name false prophets/teachers).
Bark at the dogs (mock the religious).
Pray for the shepherds.
Number four is something I want to focus on
in particular. Is it wrong to mock? It depends. It is not wrong to mock the religious.
Scripture backs this up. Read 1 Kings 18:17-40. Verse 27 reads, "It came
about at noon, that Elijah mocked [the prophets of Baal] and said, 'Call out
with a loud voice, for he is a god; either he is occupied or [has wandered
away], or is [traveling], or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be
awakened.'" According to Scripture, mocking is perfectly acceptable. Why
was he mocking them? What was he mocking them for? People who are foolishly
religious in the way they live and the things they do, or people who hold to
really stupid beliefs, such as evolution, deserve to be mocked. I mean, when
you get right down to it, they are claiming that their great, great, great,
great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was a rock. That they even
believe we evolved from monkeys makes them a bunch of monkeys. If you read
Charles Spurgeon's sermons, you will find that he, too, mocked things.
It is two completely different things to
(1) mock a religion, a religious practice, a doctrine, or a belief, and to (2)
mock a person. Mocking the religious practices, false doctrines, or misplaced
beliefs that a person holds to is not mocking them personally, no matter how
strongly they may feel that it does. They may take offense to it personally,
but it is a false offense. I have been debating unbelievers in a number of
forums over the years and have witnessed immature Christians react the exact
same way. When unbelievers speak against God, the Bible, or Christianity, these
immature Christians take offense. The attacks being made are not being made
against the Christian, but against God Himself; so the offense is a false one.
If they start saying things about you, then you can take offense. But if they
are attacking the Bible, it is not a personal attack against you. The Christian's
response should be, "You are not offending me by what you are saying; you
are offending God." If you say something nasty about my best friend, I
cannot take offense to it. It is not my offense. I can dislike your comment,
but the offense is not mine.
Example of a false offense: If you do
something stupid and I say, "That was a stupid thing to do," I have
in no way called you stupid personally. I called your behaviour/actions stupid.
You could have a genius-level I.Q. and your behaviour/actions could still be
stupid. It has no bearing whatsoever on your intelligence or person. Yet, how
often do people ignorantly assume that you are calling them stupid? Quite
frequently! If you step out on the road without looking and narrowly miss
getting hit by a car, your actions were stupid. I will not apologize for
calling them such. I do not even need to attempt to justify my having done so.
However, if I personally call you stupid, and not your behaviour/actions, then,
yes, I am required to apologize to you for having done so. There is no offense
given for your behaviour/actions being stupid. Also, it is not name calling to
refer to your behaviour/actions as being stupid. Name calling refers directly
to the person, not to their behaviour/actions.
Would you mock a brother or sister in
Christ who is merely ignorant or does not know better? Hopefully not, but it
does happen unintentionally. Sometimes they take it mockingly when it was never
meant that way. In such cases, there is nothing you can do about it. You can
apologize to them until the cows come home, even though they are at fault for
having misconstrued your intentions, but it will not change anything. If a
person wants to be offended, whether you meant to offend them or not, they will
be offended. This is a form of manipulation. By taking offense, even though you
did not mean any, they shift the guilt from themselves to you, making you feel
guilty. It is how they get away from having to acknowledge the truth.
If we are preaching the true Gospel, we are
going to offend people. That is just the way it is. Get used to it! The Gospel
is offensive. If it is not offensive, you need to re-evaluate what you are
preaching because it clearly is not the Gospel of Christ Jesus. I refuse to
tip-toe around as if walking on broken glass, beating around the bushes with
these people. Find me a single example where any character in the Bible did
such a thing. You will not find it. Examine the life of Jesus. He did not do
it. He was gentle with certain types of people and quite harsh and blunt with
others. If you want to ask "What would Jesus do?", try reading your
Bible and paying attention to what He did.
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