Do We Really Believe People Can Change?

Christians, do we believe that people can change? How long do we hold the past over people’s heads? Is it right to hold their parents’ past over their heads? Is it right to hold someone accountable for their grandparents’ actions?

Do we believe that God can change lives? How long should we hold Paul/Saul accountable for the Christians he persecuted? Should we throw out all of the NT written by Paul? Should we rip out the sections of Acts that talk about Paul?

Rahab was a prostitute, yet she is in the ancestry of Jesus. Is Jesus tainted forever because of his Great-great-great-...-grandmother? King David was an adulterer and murderer. Why should the throne even have stayed in his family, let alone be claimed by Jesus?

Do we believe that God can transform people’s lives, or are there really whole swaths of people who are deplorable and irredeemable?

Have we given up on the gospel? Is it only Good News for some? Is it only for those who think like us, or act like us, or vote like us, or look like us?

Has Christ called us “to proclaim good news to the poor”, but only certain ones? He has sent us “to proclaim liberty to” only certain captives?

Or has God called us “to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” to all who will receive it and respond - regardless of party, or skin color, or bank balance?

It’s time for us, those who claim the name of Christ, to be about the “family business” and stop alienating the very people we are trying to reach ... which is everybody.