We were created in his image

Remember, those Christians who peeve you so much—God chose them too. For some reason, I find it much easier to show grace and acceptance toward immoral unbelievers than toward uptight, judgmental Christians. Which, of course, turns me into a different kind of uptight, judgmental Christian.
A Believer’s To-Be List: Steps to a fresh start with God by Philip Yancey http://www.christianitytoday.com/

Towards the end of class last Tuesday, we were focusing on how to treat non-believers, bearing in mind that they had and were God’s image too. I couldn’t help but remembering this quotation, which I had come across quite some time ago and couldn’t have agreed more. In my experience, it’s been much more difficult to deal with those believers who claim to have faith but don’t seem to have deeds (James 2: 14). When I was first back, with Christian ideals freshly baked from England, I found a few people at my first Thai church simply not so very loving. Believing that part of love was speaking the truth, I confronted them, surely along the line of Ephesians 4: 15 (speaking the truth in love). But I was then told to finish reading the Bible before I started to go about criticizing long-time believers. That was when I learned that Thai Christians were still Thai, and of course Thai people tend to find it hard to accept criticism, however constructive. Later on in my journey with Christ at other churches, I’ve run into long-time Thai believers who seem to be fond of causing what they call ‘new believers’ like myself to stumble (1 Corinthians 10: 32) and who will say to me, “If your love [for your neighbors] was true, you would have to be able to endure this.” Such a nasty version of 1 John 2: 10 –“Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble”! Apart from the quotation above, I’ve been given a lesson on how to handle those Christian leaders who can’t seem to practice what they preach in Romans 12: 3 – “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”