Have you ever worked in an office of twenty or so people? Or maybe a hospital? Places where there is a cross-section of varying lifestyles and interests. If you have then you have seen this scenario play out. There is one individual who occupies the bottom rung. They are the brunt of all the teasing, all of the jokes and all of the negative gossip. Whispers abound and eventually the person resigns or is fired.

The remaining employees bask in the afterglow. People bring in cookies and hang around the coffee corner talking about how proud they are to have ferreted out the weed, how much better they were, how warm and loving the atmosphere had become. Soon enough the cookies become stale and the coffee scorches. Soon enough another individual becomes the focus of their discontent. Soon enough another person becomes the brunt of all the teasing, all of the jokes and all of the negative gossip.

Have you ever seen that? Doesn’t it seem as though there always has to be someone we can look down on, someone we are better than, someone we can use to make ourselves look better by making them look worse? Someone that allows us to avoid our shortcomings by focusing on theirs?

Yesterday I received two emails. They were sent through third parties, copied, pasted, forwarded, etc. all in an attempt to prevent their tracks being followed by the power that be here at blogstream. The emails were from Lucifer and househusband and this was their concern. They had seen the comments posted by POH, about me being them, and wanted to know if I wanted them to stop because of her comments.

My response to them was that it was their decision but not to stop for no better reason than me. It wasn’t my call, you see, it was theirs. Undoubtedly the scathing words coming from the very seat of blogstream Christianity, POH, were unfounded. Last month I forgave POH her indiscretions and I posted that forgiveness right here, in public. The Christian that I am relentlessly accused of not being, found solace in the comfort of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the very foundation of the Christianity I am accused of not following.

In the light of that forgiveness one would think the matter finished. Sadly, and in the name of Jesus, it was not. When POH returned she posted a continuation of the conflict so as to better explain her situation, continue the belittling and get, as it were, the last word. The duty had fallen to POH to extract a blood atonement for sins committed against her, not God. Redemption was the business of POH, not God. Among the last words of Jesus were “Father forgive them”. Among POH’s last words were “I am always right”.

As it has turned out, I was neither Lucifer nor househusband. I would direct you to POH’s comments but they are no longer there; the damage done. When POH is right she pontificates and in those rare instances when she’s wrong, she deletes. And the Christian posts continue. The posts of one so wrapped in anger and vitreal. What difference can be seen in the rantings of the blogger Lucifer to you and the rantings of the blogger POH to me? Why should the one be condemned while the other praised?

Blogstream has many Christians and among them both good and bad seeds. There are Christians whose hypocrisy bespeaks their beliefs and there are those, such as I, who struggle daily with applying what we believe to what we do. We happily embrace that struggle as God’s challenge to us. It’s to this Christian community that I now speak, and I speak as loudly as I can from my perch on the bottom rung of your ladder.

Should I not try with all my heart to live as I perceive God may want me to live? Can I truly be a Christian with a heart filled with anger and vengeance and hatred? If I hide my hateful ways within a few scattered Biblical Scriptures do they then become hidden from your view, overlooked and, by omission, accepted?

How long can anyone flog a person before you turn your head away from the brutality and see instead the self-righteousness? Were His first twenty lashes for His sins, the next ten for the Pharisees and the last ten for Pilate? Perhaps you believe, as I, that even the first lash was unjustified. When, in the Christian heart of compassion and love, is enough really enough?

Once before I added a post in which I felt my comments would have been inappropriate. This, too, is such a post. I implore your comments but will not respond to them. I am not seeking a conversation but rather guidance. I ask that you refrain from negativity. How is it that a forgiving heart is so belittled while an embittered heart so thrives?