We have all heard the nonsensible term “Non-practicing Jew“. I guess then there is also a thing as ‘Non-practicing Christian.’ I was never sure though about the actual meaning of the terms. I think WWII proved that being a Jew was not in the dna but actually a religion. In like manner, there is no such thing as a race of Jews. The Nazis were forever wrong about identifying who was and who wasn’t a Jew with their practice of eugenics. The same is true with being a Christian. How in the world can you be a Christian but not actually practice it? Is it something you actually practice? Or is it something you believe and then do without practice? I know. It’s confusing.
I think the bottom line is a non-practicing Christian is a Christian when things are bad and then they want God to do them a favor. It means they don’t want to deny who they are at the time, but fail to live up to what they say they believe.
As a practicing Christian is a Christian who has the opportunity to participate in the kingdom of God and fails to. A non-practicing Christian is a Christian who fails to feel when there is an opportunity to empathize when there is an abundant opportunity to feel and identify with a fellow human who was either suffering or in an ecstatic state of joy.
Think about it for a moment-
How can a godly person not respond to human suffering? How can a godly person not feel natural affection for our fellow neighbors? How can a godly person placed petitions, supplications, prayers for either gifts or forgiveness if we fail to respond to God’s creatures, our fellow brethren closest to us?
I suppose by definition to practice would be to ascribe; to practice would be a habit, yet not a meaningless ritual. To practice being a Christian would first involve practicing being a genuine real person. A real person admits that’s all they are-a person-a person who first is guilty of sin, who has been retained by the grace of Christ, and now seeks unification with God by joining of the rather: Christ’s Church.
In that sense, we are all a non-practicing ‘something’ for we are all short of what it is we say we believe or do.
Of all things, if you are a Christian, though, believe it and then do it. Saying it without doing it is horrible. Not saying it and not doing it is just as bad. There is no way a person can be at peace with himself if our true self is hidden, locked up and denied. Our common practice is nothing more than being a genuine human subject to the laws of God as revealed by Christ. The absence of our faithful expression of who we are a genuine form that should be transform by compassion and patience is the practice of being nothing more than you. This final phase should be one of the virtues of being a Christian. To this effect we should attempt that they whoever we are called to be and who we are.
Hard Times Ministries 