Arrogance and Christianity

So this morning at church our preacher gave a very interesting sermon on arrogance and Christianity. He started out by turning to scripture, Matthew 20:20-28, where the mother of two of the disciples asks Jesus to have one of her sons sit at His right and the other at His left. Jesus asks if they can drink from the same cup He does and of course they answer "yes". This is the first display of arrogance in this scripture. The next one comes when the other 10 disciples get angry. Jesus quickly humbles them by gathering all 12 together and telling them that to be first, they must be slaves to others. To be served, you must serve. I know how silly this may seem, but I'm always struck with how wise Jesus is. The arrogance of the 2 disciples quickly passed to the other 10 by them standing there and thinking, "how dare they? We would never act that way," but in actuality, they're acting the exact same way. The pastor then asked us a question, "Are you, as a Christian, more arrogant now that you've found Jesus than you were before you knew Him?" Wow. In that question lies what I believe to be why so many people dislike Christianity.

As a college student, we are all guilty of the same type of arrogance as the 10 disciples. Someone asks a "dumb" question and we all think "I would never ask a question like that." But that's being arrogant. We're looking down on someone thinking we're better. As Christians we do this a lot. Because we know we will be redeemed for our sins, we feel it's OK to look at, and possibly point out, the sins of others. In reality, this is not OK. Jesus, the one person to ever walk the earth that was perfect and didn't sin, didn't judge us for our sins. How can we, as Christians, point out the sins of others when Jesus didn't even do that? Of course people would have a bad taste in their mouth about Christianity after witnessing behavior like that. Some of my friends refer to them as "the God Squad." They're the people who separate themselves from the kids who drink or party. We shouldn't separate ourselves, we should be with them. Jesus didn't spend all of His time with Christians; He spent His time with people who needed Him. We need to stop being so arrogant and realize that we're just like everyone else. Yes, our faith separates us from others because we believe, but we're all sinners, we're all God's children.

This leads me to my goal of this year: To stop being so arrogant. I'm no better than anyone else.