Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Dissapointment, judgement...and I'm weird, evidentally.

Let me start by saying that the point of this post is not my eventual thoughts of this situation, but of my response to the situation; and as a christian, being challenged in the sort of response I have. This just happened to be a rather challenging event to my views and judgements.

So I hung out with a few guys recently, some from church, some not. And...it was rather uncomfortable. Not because I didn't know the people; actually, the ones I sat with I knew pretty well. But because I wonder how different that room of guys looked from the rest of the world... Language, good dose of alcohol...and a few seemingly benign consequences along side of that, too. Now, this doesn't bother me when I hang with people who don't give a whoop about Christ and His calling; why should they *not* act this way? But we as Christians are called to be in the world, not of it... So yeah, having a event to have a bunch of guys over is great way to build community and relationships...but I feel that even there, I wonder the benefit if we can't be told any different from the guys we, as followers of Christ, are hanging out with.

And then on the flip side of this, I wrestle with judgement; that oh so narrow line between that which I am uncomfortable with and "feel" is sin and that which is actually sin. Do I really have a place to judge from my limited perspective and limited intelligence of the situation? Should I just get over it, forget it, and get okay with it? As with all things, I feel pulled between knowing what is right for me and knowing what is right...and trying to figure out which is which.


I don't know that I really have an answer to this, other then to take this case by case and figure it out as such, and try to ever sharpen my discernment and limit my judgement. I do know that ultimately, I still love these gentlemen, and still have a large respect for them. Perhaps not in some ways that I had before...but I think I'm okay with that.

And by the way, I think I'm the only guy I know who does NOT enjoy smack talk, smack downs, or general bloody decapitating...yeah. Weird, huh?

3 comments:

paul said...

I think this is a good thing to wrestle with. Where you tend to err toward "judgement/legalism" it may be that some of us tend toward having no standards. The "no course talk or course joking" passages have always bothered me... as I know I can go there all too easy. So I applaud you for asking the questions. (And I think judging has to do primarily with non-belivers, not believers, and is talking about salvation. This is different from calling someone's behavior into question. You are not judging their salvation, but how they are living it out.)

JC said...

Good thoughts Dustin and I am glad you are wrestling with this. I think if I would have been there, I would have felt very similar to you.

I think that as Christ followers, we are called to live our lives differently. Figuring out what this looks like is the hard part sometimes. One of the main reasons I am a Christian today is because I met a group of men who knew how to have fun without the alcohol, foul language, and the crudeness that kind of rides along with those two.

In them, I saw something different that caused me to look at my own life - a life without Christ. These guys were a great witness for me.

You might have been a witness to someone there by choosing to not participate in some of the things that seemed questionable to you. I think our behaviors do matter and bear as great a witness to Christ's work in our life as anything we say.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Dustin.

Jenlyn said...

BLOG MORE! Love you :)