Spy Vs. Spy

Growing up I loved MAD Magazine.  One of my favorite shorts was "Spy Vs. Spy".  While I would like to say I always rooted for the White Spy, I really often rooted for the Black Spy.

In my black and white mind, white meant good, black meant evil, but in the world of Spy Vs. Spy there was no such delineation.  Both Spies had moments of innocence and moments of mischief.  That conflict (between what I expected and what I read) drove my own thinking to the point where I sympathized and secretly supported the Black Spy in all his endeavors.  The truth was not my perception.

Today I have noticed a trend of Spy Vs. Spy in the Christian community.  Christians of differing opinions and different backgrounds disassembling one another in public forums and web logs.  Sometimes the motivation comes from a simple misunderstanding, sometimes the motivation comes from something deeper, perhaps a bad experience of some sort that simply soured someone's perception toward a larger group of Christians.

Part of this also stems from a differing sense of duty.  Christians feel the tug of responsibility to "love thy neighbor" but also to insure that "the sword" (ie. gov't) is being properly wielded - and if it isn't, they feel they need to do something about it.  This tension can wreak havoc in how a given Christian communicates with people around them.  A second (and often very personal) cause of tension is that Christians know that God wants a relationship with EVERYONE, especially the people who do not know or follow Him.  They try and put themselves in God's shoes, feel what He feels and **it drives them to want to correct people, unfortunately often before they have even begun to have a relationship with God.  To some people the behavior exhibited by such people is unloving, while to the person doing the correcting, it couldn't be more loving.

I have no solutions, I am not even trying to come up with one.  I am simply observing and commenting on what *I* see happening.  What I can say is that every Christian walks their own path in their own time and that instead of picking one another apart, they should spend more time trying to understand the other brother's point of view.  If you find yourself angry or irritated with someone else, try putting yourself in their shoes.  For me it always comes back to James 1:19: "be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger".



** "It" is a loaded word in this case.  The "it" I know I feel when I attempt to consider how God feels leaves me very sad and a little numb.  [see parables of lost sheep, prodigal son, etc. and of course the very fact that Jesus was willing to die for us all, whether we accept and believe that fact or not].