Feeling Better

Romans 11 tells the Gentile believers not to think too highly of the fact that God had mercy on them. After all, God still loves the Jews and will bring His faithful people around. It was easy for me to read that this morning and think, "How could anyone feel better about themselves because of God's mercy? If we had His mercy, then we were living a bad enough life for that mercy to mean something."

Then I remembered a man at work who's into spirituality. He thinks we would have differences of opinion regarding organzied religion (maybe...) but metnioned his keen interest in spiritual things. I don't consciously remember feeling better than him, but there is a degree to which we Christians comfort ourselves in conversations like that with thoughts like, "Yes, but we have the truth." That is true, but we're not better than someone who misunderstands. Both of us need God's mercy, and both have it. One is taking advantage of that mercy; the other isn't yet. Christians, watch out for this prideful tendency to think how much better we are than those who still need God's mercy. If we watch ourselves, we will have compassion and an ability to do Christ's real work. Without watching ourselves, we end up doing things like forming picket lines with signs detailing our opinion of what and whom God hates.