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If you weren’t raised in a Christian family, there’s a good chance that you have a defined, obvious time you remember, when you began to follow Jesus. If you were raised by Christian parents, the waters might be a little murkier. I’m pretty sure I got saved at 16. I underwent a fairly dramatic life-change. But then, my parents had shared the knowledge of God with me from my first days. I never remember a time when I didn’t intellectually know about God, consider myself a Christian, and even self-identify as a follower of Jesus. It was just that my life was a much more mixed bag before the Lord confronted me that winter night in 1994.

Which means that I have memories like these: I was 15, eating lunch, I think, in the courtyard of Hatboro-Horsham High School, and a friend (not a Christian at all) looked at me and said, “You say you know God, so why do you hate people?” I don’t remember having anything intelligent to say back. I did in fact hate people. There were kids at that school I couldn’t stand, and I talked about it all the time. And of course, this person who didn’t follow Jesus knew enough to see the hypocrisy in my actions, and call me out on it. He was right. It wasn’t the only time a friend who didn’t know God called me out for some inconsistency. Having real friends leads to that sort of thing. I say all this as a preface to the rest of this post—I am about to make a case that we followers of Jesus should become better at ignoring what non-believers say about us. That’s right. In 2020, we need to develop thicker skin—becoming less sensitive to the way people who don’t follow Jesus critique our life of serving Him.

But first, I just acknowledge, right up front, that many times people who don’t know Jesus do notice things about us, and God does use them, I think, to prod us to notice some blind spot. I am not above it. We are not too good to listen to others. And so, we should be up for it.

But is that the rule? Must we listen to everything people say about us? Must we listen to what the news says about us? What about activists on Twitter? What about college professors? What about celebrities? What about your friends or co-workers or classmates? How do you know when they have legitimate critiques about you, and when you can safely ignore their appraisals of your life as a Christ-follower? I’ll come back to this last point, but first, let’s remember a basic premise. I think we find it in Psalm 1:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly.

This first line of Psalm 1 introduces us to the idea that there is something called “the counsel of the ungodly.” Everyone who wants to be blessed will not “walk” in it—in other words, they won’t listen to this advice and act on it. “Ungodly” just means people who have no knowledge of God, or no desire to be under his authority, or no interest in following Christ. “Counsel” is “advice that is concerned with moral and ethical decisions in life” (according to Allen Ross in A Commentary on The Psalms).

So what is “the counsel of the ungodly”? It is the advice, plans, wisdom and whole way of thinking of those who do not acknowledge the authority of God in their lives.

How does this counsel come to us? First, and most naturally, it comes to us person to person—someone in our lives who doesn’t acknowledge God tells us how we should think or talk, or what we should be doing. And here, we’re not talking about getting medical advice from a doctor, or advice on our car from a mechanic. We’re talking about life advice. Especially about the things affect the direction of our lives, and things that impact how we follow Jesus. People who don’t follow Jesus can be pretty quick to tell those of us who do how it should be done. Right?

“If you really cared about people, you would…”

“If you love God so much, why don’t you…”

“Unlike Christians, Jesus would be…”

It’s difficult enough when it’s face to face with people in your life, but today we have much more. We have the media (social and traditional), which has taken the thoughts of complete strangers, multiplied the number of people who may speak to us by the thousands, and then adopted an urgent, demanding stance—we must listen to them, all the time. Their concerns must dominate our lives. Their demands must dictate our actions. Their words must define our worlds. Their appraisals determine who we are.

And if we don’t listen? Mobbed. Sidelined. Cancelled.

Now, anytime the mob is big enough, there will, of course, be consequences for defying them. But Jesus told us not to worry about any of that. So fear is one thing we need to combat, but there is another danger for us right now in all of this, and it is this—we are in danger of thinking that, just because the voices are loud, or incessant, or powerful, we have to listen to them. Maybe I have to get on board. Maybe their concerns need to be my concerns. Maybe, if everyone says I’m a bad representative of Jesus, they’re right. And all the different media have become like a thick blanket of pressure always pressing down on our heads—the more we watch or listen or read, the more we feel the pressure, and if we’re not careful, it can become dominant.

Think about that for a second. I bet a lot of us know that feeling of pressure very well—the pressure to check in, to stay current, and then to lend our voice to the Voice of the Media itself. The more you look at it, the more you listen, the louder the voice in your own head becomes. But Psalm 1:1 invites us to come up for air. It invites us to consider the source. Who is speaking? Who is demanding my attention, or my allegiance? Here’s the test:

• Do they submit to the Lordship of Christ?
• Do they follow his teachings?
• Are they…Godly?

If the answer is no, then Psalm 1 says their voices can safely be ignored. God says it.

Think about the freedom the Word of God is offering us here. If they are not godly, we should not listen to them. They don’t know God. They don’t understand him. In fact, they are opposed to the rule of Christ, which means that they fundamentally misunderstand the world, and everything in it. Therefore, their counsel is unhelpful in any area that really matters. It may be prompted by a real situation. It may be a response to real pain, or anger at real injustice. It may even have some element of good intentions—a desire to help or try to fix the world. But it is not wise. It does not know what the real problems are, and it will not submit to the actual solution.

The problem is alienation from God and rebellion against Jesus.

The cause is sin.

The symptoms, my friends, are all the hate and injustice and inhumanity.

The solution, everywhere, always, to everything, is the same for everyone: Bow the knee to King Jesus; take his word as your command; be transformed by the Holy Spirit, and go live life free of sin. Think that won’t change things? Try it. When everyone does it, it’s called heaven. It would heal racial divides. It would heal systemic injustice. It would heal the gay community. Right? It would heal the war on the border of Russia and Ukraine and the trash-filled oceans and Kensington and every marriage and your anxiety…and everything else.

So…if a non-believer calls you out, here is a simple check to do: Are their observations, and is their advice, in line with the teachings of Christ and the rest of scripture? If it lines up, I may want to think about what they’re saying. If a friend calls me out for hating people, well, I should listen to him. But if they demand things that contradict the teachings of Christ, or place burdens on people Christ never would, or propose solutions that ignore Jesus, or act like they actually have the right to evaluate my service to Christ—that’s the counsel of the ungodly. We don’t have to listen to it.

We love them. But we don’t take their marching orders.

Note: Friends, normally, this is something I’d say on a Monday night, instead of posting it here. Though it lives on the world wide web, this blog is for the Young Adults of Calvary Philly, and at the moment, this seemed to be the best way to get it out to you guys.

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How are Christians who have light skin to love neighbors and friends who often face a different world, simply because their skin is darker? How does someone like me, with light (white) skin, act on the knowledge that, even though my friends with dark skin are no different than me in terms of anything that affects our common humanity, they have had to face all kinds of experiences that I never have, and may in fact have a long family history of such experiences that is very different than mine?

For those of us who have been able to live our lives without facing the obstacles that our black friends have faced—it is a time to reflect on this fact, and to think about how we can help those around us.

So, how can we help? As you all know, there are a lot of people with answers to that question. There is no shortage of counsel; no shortage of people ready to tell us all, white or black, what to do. Many checklists to read, many causes to donate to, many numbers to text and graphics to post and marches to join. And if you’ve undergone the heart change that happens when someone meets Christ—you do care, you must care, about people around you who are hurting.

But how do we know what we should do? For the follower of Jesus, there is only one answer to that question—we go to the word of God. The word of God tells us what to care about. It tells us what kinds of things to act on, and what kind of action to take. It tells us what kinds of words to speak, what kind of listening to commit to, and how we need to love people.

It will direct us into things like…

• Consideration of someone else’s pain—not an attempt to feel their particular pain, but an ability to feel pain that they feel pain. “Weep with those who weep…”
• Active reaching out to those who are hurting. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” 
• Honest acknowledgement of any resentment or dislike of people for their skin color or cultural traits—or any reason whatsoever. “Confess your sins…” “Receive one another, just as Christ also received us.”
• Finding active ways to help people who need help. “Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”
• Building church communities where racial differences are not ignored, any more than differing talents or giftings are ignored, but enjoyed and treasured, because we understand that God created diversity, because no one kind of human can fully display His glory—it takes both male and female, a whole range of personality types, and every skin tone from pale beige to ebony black—to even begin to reflect a piece of the kaleidoscope of his glory. “You have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation…”
• The ability to listen first, and speak last. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath…”

But friends, it will do more than this. The word of God brings us into the presence of God and shapes us to be like God.

Every voice out there right now is clamoring for your attention, and every movement wants to shape you into its own image.

Here is the freeing, clarifying truth, one that we desperately need to remember in the days ahead—you only have one Lord, and you are called to be conformed only into His image.

Only one voice actually merits your attention, and you find it in God’s word, written down, in your hands. It will be the lamp to your feet in these confusing, difficult days. It is, in fact, the only light. No organization, no hurting person died for you—only the risen Lord died for you. If we yield ourselves to listen and follow Him, He will lead us forward. He will keep us from being paralyzed by pain, or stifled by fear, or numbed by indifference. He will keep us from hurting when we mean to help, or wasting our energy, or failing to speak when we must.

He will keep us active. He will enable us to be true agents of healing. And He will keep us focused on the greatest injustice (the injustice of sin against God Himself), and the greatest shame (the shame we all bear outside of Christ’s forgiveness), and the greatest love: the love of God in Christ that forgives men and women of all sin, and heals them of all hurts.

Preach the love of God.

Preach the kingship of Christ.

Preach the forgiveness of sins.

Preach the unity of believers.

Invite everyone in to the family.

It’s the only hope.