“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
A friend who works in the food service industry told me recently it’s been hard finding people to work on Sundays. The reason isn’t because they want their weekends off. It’s because of the people that frequent their restaurant on Sundays. She called them the church people. The people that come in after church to eat lunch. She said they are the worst customer they serve, both in tipping and just being rude in general. I’m sure it’s not all “church people” but it’s enough of them to where she has a difficult time finding people to work that day.
In so many words, she’s saying people are attending church to worship God, then leaving and living like the world. For those who claim to be Christians, this goes against who God has called us to be. Why would an unbeliever want what we have if we don’t offer them anything different than what the world offers?
‘Come pretending’
Christian rock group DC Talk wrote a song called “What if I stumble?” The lyrics tell the reality of how the world views people who call themselves Christians while their actions tell a different story. The words at the beginning of the song are, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
But this is not new.
Ezekiel wrote about this regarding the people in his day: “So my people come pretending to be sincere and sit before you. They listen to your words, but they have no intention of doing what you say. Their mouths are full of lustful words, and their hearts seek only after money” (Ezekiel 33:31).
Statistics show the world is moving further away from God as we’re seeing a steady decline in the number of people who claim to be Christians, and church attendance is at an all-time low. Could a contributing factor be the people who claim to be followers of God, yet live like the world? Are you one of them?
