Do you like what you see?

Most people don’t get out of bed in the morning and declare “today I will neglect my health…” or “from today onward I will only make decisions that increase my bank account and neglect my family”. Yet we all have revelation moments where we stop and realize ‘how did we get here?’  Almost no one gets married with divorce in mind, yet, in 2025, for every ten weddings there were four to five divorces in this country.

As humans we must realize that the small, subtle, seemingly meaningless choices we make daily have a cumulative impact in areas of our life. We have to embrace this reality.  If we neglect our family or health for one night it probably won’t ruin us, but if we subconsciously repeat the pattern for a year, then we may very well end up physically deminished and single.

The American church and Christianity at large are not immune to this same set of principles.

Sometimes we observe church politics and wonder ‘how did such grounded people lose their perspective so badly?’ Or we think ‘is it just me or are we missing the God's purpose?

It’s not that the church has made a conscious decision to substantiate the claims of the world - claims such as being judgmental, hypocritical, holier than thou, self-righteous and narrow-minded. Rather it is our lack of attention to subtle, daily tasks that has led the church to place where even Christians are looking at their reflection in the mirror and are finding it hard to believe what we see.

Isn't it time to start making better choices and decisions. This has to begin with each of us on an incredibly personal level. We need to come to grips with the person in the mirror.  How can we, as Christians, expect the world to be interested in our message of hope if the world doesn’t trust us?  I am afraid many of us have become uncomfortable with our redemption story.

God sent his son into this world to redeem His people.  Scripture says “All have sinned, and fall short of God’s glory”.  I think where we get mixed up is when we start assigning specific actions to the word ‘sinned’.  Somewhere along the line we were fed a bunch of garbage theology making us think that in order to tell others about Jesus we had to blow their mind with tales of rags to riches.

Now is the time for honesty.  Most of us grew up in good homes, with loving families and stable boundaries.  We went to Sunday school and VBS.  We knew all the camp songs.  We were good kids.  Somewhere along the way we were pressured to believe that we had to make our story more attractive.  We had to make the 'before Jesus life' sound worse than it was and the 'after accepting Jesus life' sound better than it is.

Christians are broken and wounded people just like non-believers.  Christians are not perfect, nor are we called to be perfect.  When will we stop pretending we don’t struggle?  When will we stand up and say “I believe in Jesus and I struggle!”  There could be no greater witness of the hope we have found in Christ than to be transparent, to look in the mirror and acknowledge that our faith does not make us perfect, rather our faith gives us the hope we can make an impact that is bigger than our struggles and short comings.