2 Tim 3:12 “And indeed, all the ones desiring to be living in a godly manner in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
This is hard for me to accept. Not because I don’t believe it, but because I don’t want it. One thing that has been tough for me is dealing with what other people think about me. I’ve tended to care too much about what some people think about me; specifically people of reputation. This is a horrible pitfall. When you care too much of what people are thinking, you are living to please people and not God.
I think most of the time when we are thinking that way it’s because we are much more aware of the natural world then the spiritual world. If we lived in more of an awareness of the spiritual world then what people think about us won’t matter as much. If the truth is that a certain person is in a grave and dangerous spiritual position, then our concern for their well-being ought to out weigh our concern of their opinion of us.
I remember a story (wether it’s true or not, I don’t know, but it still makes a good point) of a man who was driving along a foggy road at night and came to a bridge. The fog was so thick that he couldn’t see very far in front of his car. As he approached the bridge, a small clearing of the fog revealed a startling fact: the bridge was out! He slammed the brakes and stopped the car just short of running over the edge and plunging many feet into the dark water. After a brief moment of shock, he popped out car. He knew he needed to warn oncoming drivers. Many people traveled this road and the fog was still thick. As a car began to approach, he took off his shirt and began to wave it wildly, jump up and down, and scream, “the bridge is out, the bridge is out!” Well, sadly, several cars plunged into the water before he was able to finally stop the traffic.
What’s the moral of this story? That man understood something that those other drivers didn’t: that danger was ahead. I’m sure the first few drivers thought to themselves, “What’s this old drunk guy doing out here, acting like an idiot?” But that man wasn’t worried about what they thought, he was worried about their well-being. This is how christians ought to live.
Hal Chaffee 