Counterfeit

For three years, I worked for a bank. I saw a surprising amount of counterfeit money in that time. One of our regular contributors of counterfeit money was a neighboring fast-food restaurant. Every so often, their deposit would include a counterfeit one dollar bill or two. Not a hundred. Not a twenty. A one. What strikes me as odd is all the effort it took to make that bill look like a piece of legal tender. Surely all their time was worth more than one dollar.

I ran across this quote the other day which is attributed to William E. Biederwolf (1867-1929), a Presbyterian minister:

“I saw about a peck of counterfeit dollars once. Did I go to the window and throw away all my good dollars? No! Yet you reject Christianity because there are hypocrites, or counterfeit Christians.”

This made me think: there are those people out there who will reject God because of hypocritical Christians. Naturally, I feel confusion for such a mindset. I also feel sorry for those people, because they let a few people stand in the way of an eternal reward. The church isn’t home to perfect people leading sinless lives. The church is made up of people who are forgiven and who are trying to lead better lives. That’s something we all strive to do, both individually and together in unity.

As the majority of us reading these FeMails are Christians, I don’t have to ask you about hypocrisy standing in the way of your turning your life over to God. What this quote really makes me think is this: Am I one of those counterfeit Christians, turning other people off? Would my actions deter someone from listening about the Gospel? In I Peter 3:1, we are instructed to live so that an unbelieving husband “without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives.” I sincerely believe this verse applies to other people with whom we might have contact. Regardless of our individual marital status, we still have influence on non-Christians.

We’ve all heard that phrase, “Living like the Lord on Sunday, living like the Devil on Monday.” Does that apply to me? Does it apply to you? May we all check our actions and attitudes at home and in the workplace so that we don’t seem “counterfeit” to others!