Minding Our Own Business

"One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men." –Thomas Merton

A friend of mine passed this quote on to me. He had previously sent a link to a "Christian" website attacking what is being labeled "the emergent church." This fellow was pointing to the recent electrocution death of a young preacher in a baptistery in Waco as God's judgment against the emergent movement. He named the church and the young preacher.

I don't think he even knew them.

Needless to say, I was appalled.

While good information is important and healthy teaching is something God wants--I don't believe he wants these things in place of love, kindness, mercy, and gentleness. Even when Paul tells the Galatian Christians to correct someone who has been overtaken in evil, he tells them to do it "in a spirit of gentleness."

Perhaps this need to attack everyone and anyone is an attempt to gain some sort of significance in the eyes of others. I don't know. All I know is, it doesn't demonstrate the mind of Christ.

I attended a conference Saturday where I heard one speaker say the following:

"Jesus' life tells us there is nothing more important than a human being."

So, before we start writing ugly articles, naming names, attacking people we don't know and painting entire groups of people with a broad brush, maybe we should consider how important people are to God...and learn to mind our own business.