PC Brigade

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him. Mark 6:3

Jesus was in His home town, and had a real problem being accepted there as a prophet, let alone the promised Messiah. It wasn’t the Pharisees speaking, these were the ordinary folks in the town, the men and women who knew him from boyhood. They had seen Him perform miracles, and still they did not believe. The text says they were offended!


How often do we hear those words today? It seems that just about every minority group shout the words, “I’m offended” and it can be about anything. It gets attention, and is the easy way out, but as Jesus followers, we should not be too concerned about the Politically Correct brigade, after all Jesus wasn’t.


Instead, let us be a different PC group of our own as we Present Christ by our lifestyle in thought, word and deed. We should not be surprised that some of our friends and peers will be offended, just as it was in Jesus’ day, but take encouragement from the wonderful words spoken and written by the Apostle Peter, after all he knew what he was talking about!


Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
1 Peter 2:7-10

Disown?

We do it on Facebook when we decide that someone posts things which are offensive, inappropriate, or racist, and we think nothing of it. We do it in life with some folks we come into contact with who might be opposite from ourself in so many ways and you get irritated and annoyed when you are in their company. Churches do it, by excommunicating or excluding those who do not uphold that church’s beliefs, and who go directly against doctrine. They might be called heretics. These are all examples we could live with, and we may have done one of these ourselves. Social media comes to the rescue, and makes it so easy to ‘unfollow’, ‘unfriend’ or ‘block’ that annoying person.

Does this mean we are free to disown anyone we take a dislike to, or one who goes against the things we like, accept, believe, or uphold? Disowning someone publicly has serious consequences, especially if we claim the name of ‘Christ’-ian. In life, there are lots of people who don’t agree with us in everything, and likewise there are those we don’t much like ourselves. Is it enough to disown someone purely because we don’t like their lifestyle? I don’t think so. We might decide never to holiday with them, but disown them? No.

What message are we giving to the people we would disown? Maybe it’s that they don’t live up to my or your standard? Is it because they are inferior? Could it be that we forget how we behaved when we were immature, and the behaviour we now detest, we once did ourselves? Am I getting uncomfortably close to the truth? If we really want to claim the name ‘Christ’-ian we need to believe His word and behave like He tells us. After all…..

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8