Scribed In Light

How Can We Build Bridges to Christ While We’re So Busy Tearing Them Down?

There’s something weighing heavily on my heart, and quite frankly, I’m struggling to shake it.

I’ve watched people profess their love for Jesus Christ while standing in judgment of the very people He commanded us to love.

And it grieves me.

Not just for the people being judged, although my heart absolutely aches for them. But for the people doing the judging, too.

Because somewhere along the way, I fear we’ve confused standing firm in our faith with standing above one another.

And those are two very different things.

I’ve witnessed Christians point to another person’s life, their relationships, their identity, their struggles, their past, or their choices, and confidently declare what God must think of them.

As though familiarity with Scripture grants us complete understanding of its Author.

As though reading His words means we’ve walked every step of His earthly ministry, witnessed every act of mercy, and somehow been appointed to oversee everybody else’s salvation.

Well, goodness gracious.

When exactly did we get promoted to God’s management team?

Because I don’t recall seeing that job opening.

And frankly, I’ve got enough work keeping my own spiritual house in order without volunteering to supervise the entire neighborhood.

I Know What His Grace Has Done for Me

Let me make something abundantly clear.

I’m not speaking as someone who has lived a perfect life.

Good heavens, no.

I’ve sinned. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve carried shame, regret, and the consequences of decisions I wish I’d made differently.

I’ve needed forgiveness more times than I could possibly count.

And here’s what I know.

God loved me through every bit of it.

He loved me through my sin.

He loved me through my shame.

He loved me through my wrongdoing.

He didn’t wait until I had everything figured out. He didn’t require me to become flawless before extending His grace.

He met me where I was.

And He loved me.

That isn’t simply something I’ve read about in Scripture.

It’s something I’ve experienced in my own life.

Romans 5:8 tells us:

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

While we were yet sinners.

Not after we cleaned ourselves up.

Not after we became acceptable to everybody sitting in the pews.

Not after we successfully passed somebody else’s spiritual inspection.

While we were still sinners.

And knowing how desperately I’ve needed that grace, how could I possibly stand before another human being and declare them unworthy of receiving it?

I cannot.

And I will not.

How Can We Cross Bridges We’re So Busy Tearing Down?

How do we expect people to come to Christ when we’re so occupied with pointing out everything we believe they’re doing wrong?

How can we invite someone to cross a bridge we’ve already set on fire?

And then stand on the opposite bank, waving our Bibles, wondering why nobody wants to come over?

SISTER, THE BRIDGE IS GONE!

You set the thing ablaze, and now you’re complaining about the lack of foot traffic!

That might be funny if the consequences weren’t so heartbreaking.

Because those bridges represent real people.

People who are searching.

People who are hurting.

People who may already believe they’re unworthy of love.

People who have been rejected, ridiculed, shamed, or made to feel that their very existence is an offense to God.

And sometimes, the people inflicting those wounds are the very ones claiming to represent Him.

Whether someone is gay, transgender, struggling with addiction, working in prostitution, carrying a criminal past, or living a life I simply do not understand, their humanity is not conditional upon my approval.

Their worth is not mine to determine.

Their relationship with God is not mine to govern.

And His love is certainly not mine to ration.

That doesn’t mean we abandon our convictions or excuse actions that harm others. We can hold people accountable, establish boundaries, and stand firmly in what we believe without humiliating another human being.

Love does not require agreement. And disagreement does not give us permission to withhold love.

Jesus didn’t require people to become perfect before approaching Him.

He met them where they were.

He sat with people others avoided. He spoke to those society dismissed. He extended compassion to those carrying shame.

Consider the woman at the well.

Consider Zacchaeus.

Consider the people who came to Him burdened by their circumstances, their reputations, and their pasts.

Jesus did not withhold His presence until they had become acceptable to everyone else.

He met them.

He loved them.

He called them toward something greater.

And for many, that encounter with His love became the beginning of transformation.

Love wasn’t the prize waiting at the end of their transformation. Love was what invited them to begin.

So why have we become so determined to reverse the process?

Before You Throw That Stone, Check Your Own Backyard

Jesus asked in Matthew 7:3 why we’re so concerned about the speck in our brother’s eye while overlooking the beam in our own.

And somewhere along the way, I believe we’ve managed to turn that beam into an entire lumberyard.

Some of us are walking around with enough timber in our own eyes to build Noah a second ark, yet we’re squinting across the room trying to identify somebody else’s splinter.

PUT DOWN THE TWEEZERS!

We’ve got work to do at home.

Every single one of us.

Myself included.

Because if you’ve got enough time to inspect somebody else’s life, you’ve got enough time to examine your own.

And I say that with love, but I mean every word.

The amount of energy some people spend identifying everybody else’s perceived sins is astonishing.

We’re out here conducting full-scale spiritual audits on people who never hired us as accountants!

Meanwhile, our own books haven’t been balanced in years.

And here’s the part that really gets me.

When the finger turns around, when someone challenges the person doing the judging, suddenly everything changes.

The person who was so comfortable pointing out another person’s shortcomings becomes furious when asked to examine their own.

Voices rise.

Defenses go up.

Bitterness spills out.

And apparently, the commandment about being slow to anger has temporarily left the building.

James 1:19–20 reminds us to be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath, because human anger does not produce God’s righteousness.

Not just when we’re comfortable.

Not just when we’re being praised.

And certainly not just when we’re the ones delivering the criticism.

Now, anger itself isn’t automatically sinful. Jesus expressed anger. Scripture acknowledges that we can be angry without sinning.

But what we do with that anger matters.

And when our response to being corrected is hostility, contempt, or retaliation, perhaps we ought to ask ourselves what we’re actually defending.

Our faith?

Or our pride?

Because here’s something worth remembering.

The Bible isn’t just a magnifying glass for examining somebody else’s life. It’s also a mirror for examining our own.

And sometimes that reflection isn’t particularly flattering.

Trust me. I’ve looked.

There are days I could use a spiritual makeover, a fresh coat of patience, and perhaps an industrial-sized delivery of humility.

But that’s precisely why I need grace.

And so do you.

God’s Armor Was Never Meant for Poking Bears

Ephesians 6 speaks of the armor of God.

The breastplate of righteousness.

The shield of faith.

The helmet of salvation.

The sword of the Spirit.

Beautiful imagery describing the spiritual protection and strength we receive through faith.

But I sometimes wonder whether we’ve gotten a little confused about what that armor is actually for.

Because some folks appear to be putting on the full armor of God just to go around poking bears.

Provoking people.

Condemning them.

Pushing them into corners.

And then acting absolutely astonished when those people finally respond.

Well, what did you think was going to happen?

You cannot spend your afternoon jabbing somebody with a stick and then clutch your pearls when the bear gets irritated.

And you certainly cannot claim you’re defending the love of Christ while deliberately wounding the people He commanded you to love.

Ephesians 6:12 reminds us:

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood…”

People are not our enemy.

The person whose life looks different from yours is not your enemy.

The person whose experiences you cannot understand is not your enemy.

The person who disagrees with your interpretation of Scripture is not your enemy.

And the person who asks you to examine your behavior is not necessarily attacking your faith.

Sometimes they’re asking you whether you’re actually living it.

God’s armor was never intended to make us dangerous to the very people we’re called to love.

A shield is meant to protect.

Not to bludgeon.

The Living Word Is Not Ours to Weaponize

I believe the Word of God is living.

And when I say that, I don’t mean Scripture becomes whatever someone wants it to mean.

I mean that God’s Word can reach into the deepest, most extraordinary places of the human heart.

It can speak to someone grieving.

Someone ashamed.

Someone struggling.

Someone who has lost their way.

Someone who has spent years believing they are beyond redemption.

It can reach across distances that our own words cannot.

It can touch wounds we don’t even know exist.

And I believe God can move within another person’s life in ways we could never anticipate or comprehend.

So why are we so determined to stand in the doorway?

Why do we place our own conditions upon the love we ourselves have received so freely?

Why do we sometimes seem more interested in convincing someone they’re a sinner than making certain they know they are loved?

We are not the Holy Spirit.

We do not know every conversation God is having with another person’s heart.

We don’t know every prayer whispered in darkness.

We don’t know the burdens they carry, the wounds they’ve survived, or the battles they’re fighting simply to make it through another day.

And we certainly don’t know the entirety of what God has planned for them.

Being familiar with God’s Word does not make us the final authority on another person’s soul.

That should humble us.

Deeply.

What Happens When the Judgment Comes Home?

Here’s something else that troubles me.

It’s the vicious cycle that develops when people become so convinced of their own righteousness that any challenge to their conduct feels like persecution.

They judge someone.

That person is wounded.

The wounded person responds.

The person who delivered the judgment becomes offended.

And suddenly, instead of compassion or reflection, we have another battle.

More anger.

More bitterness.

More division.

And somewhere in the middle stands someone who may have been searching for God, now wondering whether they want anything to do with Him.

That breaks my heart.

And not just for the person who was wounded.

It breaks my heart for the person who did the wounding, too.

Because I wonder what they’re missing.

What has convinced them that demonstrating faith requires condemning someone else?

What has made them so afraid of examining their own conduct?

What would happen if, instead of becoming defensive, they simply stopped long enough to listen?

To reflect?

To consider the possibility that their words may have caused harm?

That wouldn’t make them weak.

It wouldn’t make them less Christian.

It might be one of the most Christlike things they could do.

And I say that knowing full well that I, too, must be willing to receive correction.

Because the moment I decide my own indignation makes me morally superior, I’ve stepped right into the very cycle I’m grieving.

And Lord knows I don’t need to add hypocrisy to my already impressive list of things requiring divine maintenance.

Check Yourself Before You Check Somebody Else

Here’s what I wish more of us would remember.

Your Christian testimony isn’t simply what you profess to believe. It’s also what people experience when they encounter you.

You can memorize Scripture.

You can attend church every Sunday.

You can quote chapter and verse until the cows come home.

But if your words leave people feeling worthless, your behavior deserves examination.

If your correction consistently produces humiliation instead of understanding, examine your approach.

If your first instinct is to condemn rather than listen, examine your heart.

And if you become furious the moment someone asks you to do the same, examine that, too.

Because if you’ve got time to check somebody else, you’ve got time to check yourself.

And perhaps that should be our starting point.

Not because we’re terrible Christians.

Not because we’re beyond redemption.

But because we’re all unfinished.

Every last one of us.

And God’s grace is available to the person doing the judging just as surely as it is to the person being judged.

Nobody gets kicked out of the grace department. Not even the people who mistakenly believe they’re running it.

Let Love Be the Bridge

I don’t want this to become another argument about who’s right and who’s wrong.

Heaven knows we’ve got enough of those.

I want us to remember who Jesus was to the people He encountered.

I want us to remember the compassion He demonstrated.

The mercy He extended.

The grace He offered.

And the love that met people where they were.

I want us to remember that not one of us has lived a perfect life.

Not one of us has escaped the need for forgiveness.

Not one of us has earned the authority to determine who deserves God’s love.

And I want us to consider how many bridges we may have torn down while believing we were building the Kingdom.

How many people have we wounded while insisting we were helping them?

How many hearts have we hardened through condemnation when we might have softened them through compassion?

How many people have turned away from faith because the Christians they encountered made them feel unworthy of the very love Christ came to demonstrate?

Those are uncomfortable questions.

They should be.

And they’re questions I must ask myself, too.

Look Beyond What Your Eyes Can See

I want us to learn to look at another human being and recognize the soul Christ considered worth dying for.

Not their clothing.

Not their sexuality or gender identity.

Not whom they love or choose to marry.

Not their occupation, their past, their vocabulary, or the way they present themselves to the world.

I want us to see beyond the things our eyes notice and our ears hear.

Because somewhere along the way, I fear we’ve become so accustomed to evaluating people through our own fleshly perceptions that we’ve forgotten to approach them with the love of the Spirit we profess to carry.

We look at people through our eyes, listen through our ears, and then allow our personal judgments to determine the worth of a soul whose value Christ has already demonstrated.

And that troubles me deeply.

First Samuel 16:7 reminds us:

“For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.”

Yet how often do we behave as though our limited observations tell us everything we need to know about another human being?

We see how someone dresses.

We hear how they speak.

We learn whom they love, what they believe, where they’ve been, or how they’ve chosen to live.

And before we’ve even begun to understand their story, we’ve formed an opinion about their standing before God.

Good heavens.

We haven’t even finished reading the cover, and we’ve decided we know the entire book!

And some of us are so confident in our conclusions that we’d probably write the review without ever opening a page.

But God knows the chapters we haven’t read.

He knows the pain we haven’t witnessed.

The prayers we haven’t heard.

The battles we know nothing about.

And the heart we cannot see.

Galatians 5:16–17 speaks of the struggle between the flesh and the Spirit.

And I wonder how often we allow our own flesh—our preferences, prejudices, reactions, assumptions, and pride—to influence the way we approach another person, while convincing ourselves we’re acting entirely in the Spirit.

Because the struggle between flesh and Spirit isn’t something we conquer once and never revisit.

It’s something we must remain mindful of every day.

And perhaps one of the clearest places to examine that struggle is in how we treat people who are different from us.

Are we seeing a human being through the limitations of our own perceptions, or are we allowing the love of Christ to shape how we respond to them?

I’m not asking anyone to abandon their faith.

I’m asking us to live it.

To look beyond the labels.

Beyond the appearances.

Beyond the differences.

Beyond the assumptions we make about people whose journeys we haven’t walked.

To recognize the dignity and worth of a human being who is every bit as deserving of compassion as we are.

Because Jesus didn’t die only for people who look like us, think like us, worship like us, or live like us.

And if His love could reach across the distance between my sin and His grace, who am I to decide it cannot reach someone else?

I want to stop looking at people merely for what I can see and start loving them because of what Christ has already seen in them.

Not a label.

Not a lifestyle.

Not a collection of perceived shortcomings.

A human being. A soul. Someone worth loving.

And perhaps if we began seeing people that way, we’d spend a whole lot less time tearing down bridges and a whole lot more time helping one another cross them.

Not by Throwing the Stones Back

I don’t want to stand in someone else’s doorway blocking the light.

I want to help them see it.

I want my faith to be recognizable in the way I treat people, especially those whose lives I don’t understand.

I want to remember that the grace which carried me through my own sin, shame, and wrongdoing was never mine to keep for myself.

I want to build bridges.

Not burn them.

And when I find myself becoming angry over the judgment of others, I want to remember that the people doing the judging need God’s love just as much as the people they’re condemning.

That’s how we begin breaking the cycle.

Not by throwing the stones back.

But by putting them down.

I don’t want to win an argument about Jesus.

I want people to encounter His love.

And if someone walks away from an encounter with me feeling respected, valued, and loved, even when we disagree, then perhaps I’ve helped leave a door open.

Not to me.

But to Him.

Because love was never ours to ration.

Grace was never ours to withhold.

And the bridges we’re called to build should never be destroyed by the very hands claiming to lead people across them.

Before you pick up another stone, check your own hands.

And before you tell someone how far they are from God, remember how far His love reached to find you.

And remember…If you’ve got time to check someone else… you definitely need to be checking yourself first.

With faith, grace, and a whole lot of unfinished work on myself,

Tina N. Campbell

Scribed in Light