Why Are Christians Often Worse Than Non Christians?

While living and outreaching in China, my wife and I noticed that Christians are often worse than non Christians.  This seems to deny that God is empowering us for works of service. I then realized a hard truth in first generation Christianity here in China. People coming to faith were not people from the best of society. They were from bad families and troubled lives. Both my wife and I are first generation Christians by the way. Sinful as we all are, people seem to come to God in their darkest hours. Thus, we faithful are not so great as it were.

People here describe their childhood families to me with words like terror, meaningless, hopeless, fearful and the like.

It takes them 10 – 20 years to be able to smile well and be able to love well. I hired 48 young people here for Christian work. Two seemed to not need counseling, The two: One stole money from a non profit.  The other broke relationship in an ugly way with all the others.

Other Reasons Christians Are Often Worse Then Non Christians

The other problem is the demands of the church culture. People expect we should all be holy, so people come to church and pretend. We cease to be real people who have faults like everyone else. It is so irritating. Vulnerability draws the world.

3rd generation Christians often are not sure what they are being saved from. By the fifth generation people may have lost all faith, but they have good Christian morals.  By the 7th generation all has gone badly, and they find God and enter their life of faith a wreck.

Another problem we fall into is that as Christians, we know some things and can become proud. We act confidently on things we do not know enough about, and our pride turns away the seekers. The pride of Christians can make them the worst friends.

Yet another issue is Christians accept grace from others, so they do not do as good. Non Christians give little grace and therefore do great. We need to be filled with grace and truth to be excellent as believers.

Also, when things are good, we forget about God. We become filled with ourselves and are a trouble to God and others.

God uses our gaps and failures to glorify Him often. However, he hates our pride and hatred.

May faith hope and love mark our ways.