Unka Glen

khatzagpaoa asked: Hi, Uncle! Lately, the Fifty Shades trilogy has been so popular over the media. They said that the trilogy is something that women should read. I got curious, so I started asking what the book was about. A Christian friend told me that it was originally Twilight fan fiction, badly written and very sexual… so, I decided not to read the book. But how do I approach my non-Christian friends that these aren’t the kind of materials they should get crazy about?

Unka Glen answered: Let’s see, how do we tell non-Christians to act Christian without knowing Christ, which is the only way that we act Christian, so that they can be less sinful, even though it doesn’t matter how sinful they are, because they already aren’t saved. I dunno, it never occurred to me to try that.

All this does seem confusing, because there are a lot of people in the church with an immature understanding of the faith, who think maybe Christians are meant to be the Sin Police for the whole world. So everywhere they go, as soon as they see a sin, they point at it, and make a loud siren noise. Wee-ooo-wee-ooo!

By contrast, here’s what Paul said to the Corinthians (who had their own funky sexual stuff going on, as it turns out): “I made up my mind to pay attention to only one thing while I was with you. That one thing was Jesus Christ and his death on the cross.”

You don’t preach “sin less”, you point them to Jesus. 

I’m about to say something that’s going to make you one of the wisest Christians you know: sinners know they’re sinning. The Holy Spirit convicts people of their sin, and deny it as people sometimes do, still, everyone feels it. Not only do sinners know they’re sinning, they know there are consequences to their sin, and they’re doing it anyway.

Your job is to point to the alternative. You’re meant to throw them a life line, not poke holes in the already leaky life raft they’re desperately clinging to.