Reverse Polarity

"Jesus answered them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance.'" Luke 5:31:32

Polarity in magnets is what attracts them to each other. If however you reverse their North/South poles (North to North and South to South) they repel each other.

While here on earth and fully human it's understandable that as the Son of God, Jesus' viewpoint could be diametrically opposed to ours.

"The poor, prisoners, the blind, the oppressed - groups mentioned in Jesus' first sermon give a strong clue to his upside down way of looking at the world."

Philip Yancey, What Good is God?

The Gospels demonstrate reversed magnetic polarity. The more reprobate, rejected, irresponsible and despicable an individual was, the stronger their attraction to Jesus. Yancey goes on to note that those who were upstanding, prominent and very important reacted in the opposite manner. The ones who felt they'd arrived actually missed out completely. Not thirsting for righteousness, they didn't access the Living Waters flowing from Christ. Others, painfully cognizant of their shortcomings, drank freely and were satisfied.

The church tends to follow social trends, not set them. We accentuate and elevate the gifted, the successful, the achievers; the very people who failed to impress Jesus. Do the unsaved see through the facade and correctly discern what we are loathe to admit? We don't have it all together either. It isn't that we shouldn't recognize people's accomplishments, mediocrity isn't the currency of the kingdom. We can just do without the pedestals.

What if those people outside the church's four walls actually showed up? Perhaps, if they weren't TOO different they could be cleaned up and whipped into shape quickly. There's plenty of slots to fill.

Suppose the chronically weird stopped by in order to give Jesus a try? Would we willingly admit to them that our need for Him on a daily basis is just as great as theirs? They're not fooled one bit and they just might be the people God sends in order to straighten us out.

How about you? How do self-righteous attitudes repel people away from and not toward Jesus? What can we learn from Christianity's critics? How can we genuinely engage with those who won't darken our church doors? How do we release that Jesus magnetism that will draw them to Him?