Reflections at 4 a.m.

“Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry ‘Peace’ when they have something to eat, but declare war against him who puts nothing into their mouths.”

In the middle of a long night shift, one often craves better coffee than may be had reheated from the canteen in the office kitchen.

By “better” I don’t mean half an inch of George Clooney-level Nespresso® or a fresh cappuccino from Starbucks (assuming, in the case of the latter, you can still manage to justify shoveling hard-earned dollars into the coffers of Planned Parenthood via their favorite corporate proxy). No, at 4 a.m. McDonalds will do, and do wondrously.

Yeah, First World problems, I know.

On Christians and Hypocrisy

“Christians are hypocrites.”

When people say it — and they do — they are often thinking of unscrupulous TV evangelist-types whose greed and hypocrisy have been publicly exposed, or perhaps their own bitter personal experience with a person who claimed to be a follower of Christ but acted in a very un-Christlike way.

It is certainly a great shame when people claim to be followers of the Lord Jesus but live lives of self-centredness and prejudice. Often these people make the matter worse by assuming an air of false piety and loudly condemning those who do not match up to their lofty standards of conduct — standards they themselves do not even follow.

Is there a Biblical response to this sort of thing? How should a genuine believer respond?