A Comfortable Christian

            I’ve become a comfortable Christian and I’m uncomfortable with that.

            About a week ago, I went to a teen women’s Bible study. I remember we got off topic and started talking about the call we have as Christians to spread the gospel, no matter what opposition we may face.

             One girl pointed out how so many of us fear offending anyone with our beliefs that we keep Jesus to ourselves instead of sharing His love. We don’t want to step out of our comfortable, Christian bubble to reach someone out of fear of being offensive.

            I started to wonder: Have I become so comfortable as a Christian that I’m afraid of being offensive?

            A specific example came to mind. In my English class, we read a spiritual autobiography. We were doing group work and I found myself on the opposite spectrum of a debate. The first part of the debate was about whether the voices the narrator heard were demons or a side effect of her depression. The second part was about whether religion saved her or was religion a defense mechanism to deal with her depression.

            There was a guy in my group who had a depressed parent and he argued that what his parent went through was similar to the narrator. He disagreed with all of the “religious nonsense,” as he called it, and made his case. I could tell he felt strongly about the topic, so I mainly stayed quiet, as if I was neutral on the matter.

            But I wasn’t.

            Having gone through depression myself, I felt my own connection to the narrator and came up with my own ideas. My idea was that the devil used the depression to his advantage. I also believed that though religion might have been a defense mechanism, in the end, God was what truly saved the main character, just as He saved me. Out of fear, though, that I would be offensive to the guy with the depressed parent, I didn’t say much.

            But I should have.

            Why was I so afraid of being offensive? Isn’t that what happens when we disagree with societal mainstream ideas, as Christianity seems to always do nowadays?

            Or has it always been like that?

            As these thoughts ran through my mind during Bible study, the same girl pointed out something else that struck me. She said, “Jesus must have been the most offensive person on Earth.”

            I completely agree.

            Jesus was so different from what everyone was expecting, that He constantly offended people. He worked on the Sabbath. He sat with all kinds of people society looked down on. He had “radical” ideas, so to speak.

Jesus was so bothersome to society that He still offends people today!

            But here’s the thing. It wasn’t Jesus’ motive to offend people. It was the message He was giving. And that’s what I think Christians, including myself, don’t understand sometimes. If we respectfully spread Jesus’ message and people are offended as a result, that’s their problem.

What matters is whether or not we’re trying to be offensive.

            I should’ve realized that when I was in class. Obviously if I was trying to be offensive and said something like, “Well, I think you’re wrong and your parent is wrong. I’m right in believing this, so screw you,” then I’m sure even God would be upset with me. But if I respectfully disagreed and simply pointed out my views, even if no one agreed with me, I’m sure no one would have been offended.

            And even if someone were to be offended, it wasn’t like that would’ve been my intention. God would’ve understood.

             I’ve become too comfortable as a Christian. It’s like I’ve accepted Jesus as my Savior and left it at that, but there’s so much more to being a Christian. Spreading God’s message is part of Christianity, even if it means stepping out of my comfort zone and risking being accidentally offensive.

            C.S. Lewis put it best when he said, “If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity” (“Quotes”).

             I’ll keep that in mind next time God calls me to step out of my Christian comfort zone again.

Sources:

“Quotes by C.S. Lewis.” Goodreads.com. Goodreads, n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2014.