Do You Hate Me?

Do you hate me? This question may come at a shock considering a couple of factors. One you may not know me so why would you hate me. Second, wasn’t my blog post from a month ago asking the very antonym of this question, how is he going from Do you love me? to Do you hate me? Third, where is this coming from, is this guy just questioning everything he knows? There’s a purpose for this question, I’ve been thinking lately about to what end would I go for the cause of Christ, how important to me is sharing his love? I had come across a video a few years back by Pen Jillette that made me ask myself these questions. It wasn’t until I went to my college age bible study that this video made a reappearance in my world.

Pen Jillette a world renown magician most commonly known from his show in Las Vegas Pen & Teller describes an instance in which he was signing autographs after his shown one night and a person waited in line and came up to him, handed him a Bible and talked for a moment about Christ. Pen a commonly known atheist began to think about this encounter and thought, “How much do you have to hate me in order not to proselytize?”.

This question has been in some of the forefront of my thinking lately. I mean here we are as Christians who believe that there is such a thing as hell and that the only way to escape that reality is through a relationship with Jesus Christ (John 14:6). We believe that we have the answer, we know the savior that takes away our sins out of his undying love for us, and yet we don’t share it. Now we might post a bible verse on Facebook or Twitter now and then, but are we truly sharing the gospel to those who don’t know the truth. Is our sharing a thing we do behind the comfort of a screen, or is it an active part of our lives that drives us? Are we truly desperate to see people encounter Jesus Christ in a real and authentic way, or are we going to let the controlling nature of fear and anxiety get in our way? Do we love people more than we fear judgment? As someone who is an introvert sharing the gospel may be hard based on the fact alone that you’re talking to a stranger, but I’ve had to get over that and realize that the love of Jesus is far more important than my comfort. This is a life and death situation; people’s lives are at stake and I don’t want someone to miss an opportunity to encounter Jesus just because I was uncomfortable. There’s a saying that goes around Christian communities but I think it’s worth saying, you might be the only Bible someone reads. We all have our own places where we have influence, our school, job, home, and the reality is there are people in those places that don’t know Jesus. Now I don’t think we would openly say that we hate these people, but I wonder if our actions, or rather our inactions are portraying a message of hated, the opposite of very thing we confess to believe.