About Christianity

'shiki, i have never felt myself smiling. i never smile because i want to smile, and i don't know the reason and the value of a smile. i really don't know what a smile is, because i have never felt happy.'

the above more or less sums up the emotional state of a person called kurogiri satuki.

i have an online friend who is a non-christian. and when i asked her why she did not want to be a christian, she told me the christians she met were all backstabbers and hypocrites. and none of the christians she knew acted like how a christian should act. and if christians did not act according to their own rules, why should she become a christian?

isn't it sad? that the christians she met are all like that. not only her, many of the people are like that too. as christians, we sometimes act worse than a person without a God. it is as if christians is just a group of people trying their luck to get into heaven.

like satuki, he could not smile because he never experienced happiness. if one never felt happy before, it would be then logical that one would never smile.

just like my friend, who never experienced a kind act from a christian before. what she did not experience, she could not know. and what she could not understand, she could not believe. this is not a story. this is a fact of life.

we see some kids who grow up in an abusive home turned out violent themselves. not that they can help it. but if they were never shown compassion, how then could they give out mercy to others?

as christians, most of the time we tried to spread the Gospel by going into all the theories and the preaching. but we failed to consider that, maybe before we do that, we should set an example. what they did not experience, they could not know, and therefore could not understand.

if you preach and teach all the theories, they would still not understand. they would not understand why a God who tell us to love would have followers who backstab each other. they would not know why believers of a faith based on love would behave worse than godless people.

if we were to set an example in our lives, people would be able to see. they would see and want to know why we are like that. christians are always taken as a reference point. maybe you would have heard things like, 'what? you are a christian and yet you scold vulgarities?' 'you are a christian yet you are so immoral?' nobody say things like 'you are a believer of xxx and yet you utter profanity?' or 'did religion xxx teach you to do these kind of bad things?'

no. nobody makes a reference to other religions when people do bad things. they ALWAYS link it to christianity. it did not matter if a person from religion xxx do all kinds of stuffs. but it ALWAYS shows up when a christian do all the kind of wrong things.

then, we are observed by other people. to preach to them about love, we have to show them what is love. to teach them about grace, we have to show them what is the meaning of grace. to let them understand salvation, we should not be too busy to shed each other's blood.

isn't it very sad, that through the things we do, we are deterring others from wanting to know more about our faith. the things we do, not only directly harm the people, it also indirectly lowered the chances of others from being saved.

usually becoming a christian is a step by step basis. if we cannot even show them the most basic and foundations of being a christian, then, how can they even be a christian?

because he never experienced happiness, satuki could not smile. and because non-believers never saw love from christians, then how could they believe in the God of love?