A Response to Bill Maher

Last night I was channel surfing on my television and came across a news interview with talk show host Bill Maher.

In case you don’t know him, Bill Maher is a talk show host/comedian who is a proud atheist and frequent critic of religion and religious people, in particular, Christians.

During the news interview, Mr. Maher issued his standard jokes and derogatory comments about those of us who believe in God:

--we have an imaginary friend, named Jesus.

--we are nuts!

I could feel my initial visceral reaction to Mr. Maher begin to boil to the surface of my consciousness, when I caught myself, and asked myself this, question:

How would Jesus respond to Bill Maher?

It only took a second to know the answer:  with kindness and compassion.

People like Bill Maher will probably never become believers in Jesus Christ by trying to reason with them with historical evidence of Christ’s existence.  They also will probably never believe in Christ by Christians threatening them with scary tales of hellfire and damnation.

But, maybe, just maybe, Mr. Maher and other defiant non-believers like him will one day believe in Christ because they meet and interact with Christians, who instead of responding to their derogatory insults and belittling comments about our faith  with anger and counter-attacks, respond to them with love, kindness and compassion. 

When unbelievers interact with Christians whose lives are true reflections of the self-less love of Jesus Christ, incredible things can happen!

Let us pray every day that each one of us will be one of those Christians!