Take Heart When Others Judge You
If it is one thing I have learned while doing what I do for the last 5 years, it is that you have to have a thick skin. Every day people disagree with what I have to say, and I get emails and comments from many more who either think that I’m deceived or deceiving others. It’s just the nature of the game, but something recently happened to me that motivated me to share some encouragement with you — in case you are feeling discouraged, attacked, misunderstood, doubted or betrayed.
A man emailed me the other day with a very thin veil of brotherly love, coming at me from what appeared as “concern” that my written testimony — available publicly and openly on my About Page, right next to my statement of faith — that this testimony didn’t pass his standards of what (he thinks) salvation is. According to this man, my testimony didn’t say anything about the gospel or God regenerating my heart. To him, my testimony sounded “like an Arminian.”
I am a very perceptive person, and just like I am perceptive with dialectics and psyops and shenanigans and patterns of the world — I am also very perceptive when it comes to people’s patterns. I have thousands of hours of teaching and mentoring experience, and I can see through people’s motivations very easily. This is why it is often very difficult for me to be patient when someone has ulterior motives and is trying to be subversive. In the case at hand, I quickly got the sense that this guy wasn’t reaching out to actually get clarity or understand — he was winding his way through the grass looking for an opportunity to accuse.
Nevertheless, I indulged him and went through the trouble of re-reading my entire testimony (10,000+ words), so that I could pick out statements where I explicitly credit God as my Savior, the source of my faith, the cause of my good works and the one who gave me a new heart and new desires, as well as the necessity for anyone to be born again to be saved. I shared 15 such statements from my testimony, and also told him that the word “God” appears over 70+ times, because God is the focus of that testimony — not me.
Well, it wasn’t enough. This man dug his heels and continued in what basically was accusing me of being a false convert, merely because I didn’t use one or two particular Calvinistic words he was setting as his standard. I told him that this is why people hate Calvinists, and why I am not a Calvinist. If your standard of someone’s testimony is that they speak in Calvinistic academia terminology, then 99% of all Christians would be disqualified. And when you get so absolutely stuck on your academic understanding of salvation that you miss the forest from the trees, it shows that you, in fact, do not understand the gospel nor the power of God.
In the last 5 years I have struggled with irregular sleep and energy because of my thyroid, losing my voice for almost a full year (and still dealing with pain afterward), financial hardship, technological attacks and all manner of stupidity from the internet. Yet despite these things, I have written 7000+ pages and millions of words, recorded over 1000+ hours of amazing content, grown a successful ministry that has touched thousands of lives, and I have hundreds and hundreds of encouraging testimonials from people about the impact of my work on their life.
I have not a single time taken any credit for this. Whether it is in my testimonial or the many videos where I have confessed Christ and His impact on my life with tears, I have always given credit where credit is due. So you can imagine that when someone ignores this great body of evidence and insists that you are the unregenerate one because you didn’t meet their criteria, as if they are standing over you with a red marker in their hand and grading your raw testimony like a theology dissertation — it is absolutely infuriating and disgusting to say the least. It is also saddening, that such people exist in the world and would be so hard hearted despite being presented with plenty of defense and evidence to the contrary.
But then I thought of Jesus, our Shepherd and whom we are conformed to the image of. Jesus was God in the flesh, and yet it was destined for Him to be rejected by His own people. Can you imagine? The God of the universe, standing right in their midst — just like the angel of YHWH stood at the burning bush with Moses — and yet the most educated ones were the ones who turned their nose and wanted Him dead. There’s an important lesson in that example today, especially for Calvinists I feel. The frustration and anger God must have experienced is unimaginable. 1500 years of history and catering to a people with a brass forehead, nurturing them and keeping them despite their apostasy, and when He finally shows up — He is treated with contempt by the ones who were supposed to be the first to recognize Him. He was betrayed, He was mocked and He was falsely accused.
Jesus reminds us in John 15:20 that a servant is not greater than his master, and in this way we can put ourselves in Jesus’ shoes and marvel at His mercy, and also marvel at His pain. Infinitely greater than ours, especially since He could have snapped His fingers and incinerated them on the spot for their insolence. What a great God we serve, and how longsuffering He really is. But this is the life we have been called to.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-13)
We are not prophets today, but we can take encouragement from Jesus’ words in these passages just as the apostles took encouragement after being beaten and disgraced for the sake of God’s name by the Jerusalem council (Acts 5:41). As God is conforming our lives, one confirmation of that work is that others will betray you, accuse you falsely and attack you. It is saddening, but in our sadness we look to Christ’s sadness during His earthly ministry and remember it is part of the plan. That is how you can turn sadness into joy, by giving it to God and remembering God’s plan for your life.
There are many wolves in sheep’s clothing out there. Many vile people. Many who do not care about people or about relationships, but rather care about winning, accusing and destroying. Their hearts are not regenerate, yet they claim they are. And even so, it’s not a matter to judge quickly because faith itself is a mystery — because many Christians struggle with their own insecurities and problems. In some cases it’s obvious (like the people in power at the top), but most of the time I try to refrain or be conservative when judging someone’s faith. Yet that won’t stop others from judging yours, from ignoring all of the fruits of the Spirit in your life and looking for any chance to accuse you. Remember Christ’s words in John 16:8, that the work for the Spirit (for believers) is to convict you of righteousness. What does this mean? It means that there is no condemnation for God’s elect (Romans 8), and the work of Christ’s Spirit is to remind you of Christ — both in His salvific work on you behalf, and the resultant guarantee of your salvation, as well as His example during His earthly ministry, how He suffered much more than you and how your suffering is proof that He has His hand on your life.
So do not despair when others accuse you falsely, betray you or attack you. God is with you and God is using their evil for the good. Had not this man ever attacked me, I would not have written an encouraging piece for you today. The best we can do is pray for them, that God will loosen the scales from their eyes and actually soften their heart. Sometimes that won’t happen, and we endure. But in all things we trust and remember Christ, our Savior, who is there with us every step of the way.
Maranatha.
For anyone who cares to read my testimony, it is freely available out in the open, because Jesus did everything out in the open:
