Sometimes I run into immature believers saddled by the same self-righteousness I held as a teenager and college student. I always feel compelled to respond but it always takes mountains of heart effort to respond with the right balance of truth and grace. Oy. Today I think I did a halfway decent job. We'll see. :/

This was on BabyCenter's Christian Mommies board.

Original poster:

Hi! I'm new to this group but this is my second time on baby center with my second child. I never post anything but I'm actually thinking of leaving the site especially my birth board. Everytime I log onto my birth board people are talking about "should they abort their child" or "They are having a baby with their boyfriend" I can't take the lack or respect for God. How do you ladies handle it? Or have you even thought of it?

My Response:

Like a previous poster, OP, I gather that you are immature in your faith and probably somewhat sheltered. That's where your questions are coming from. And it is okay that you are in that place. You remind me of a great deal of a younger me. The younger me who would probably have written exactly the same post would have needed a lot of gracious instruction present in the responses, so I am going to endeavor to show you the kind of gracious instruction I would have needed.

What it took me a long time to understand, and what I hope you will learn to understand as well, is that nonChristians will never act like Christians until 1) God opens the eyes of their hearts to see where they are falling short of His glory, and then 2) opens their hearts even more to want to change to be like Him. As another poster said, this is exactly why they need Christ. And then 3) even after they come to believe, sanctification is a life-long process, and young believers may still have hangups for a while. The difference is they should always be visibly progressing more and more to Christlikeness.

I want to say that I do understand the culture shock. I felt that way when I joined BabyCenter, too. That comes from being sheltered. After the initial shock, though, I remembered that the world is a secular place, full of worldly people who have either not heard or not understood the Gospel, with a few believers sprinkled in here and there trying to shed light wherever they go in whatever ways they can. And BabyCenter is just a sample size of the world at large.

Sin affects every single person on earth, in every walk of life. We are all born fallen. We are all born blinded to God's grace until he opens our hearts. This is what you will need to hang onto to wade through the posts from the still-blinded hearts. And I would try to avoid reading the posts that are really sensitive topics/hot buttons for you until you feel you can respond to them with the grace and compassion that Christ embodies. It isn't easy and it isn't fast, but it's the best way to function as light in a dark world.

Whew.

That was exhausting.

Now it's time for bed, and I still had other things to write!! Oh BabyCenter... Why do I let myself get distracted by you...

-Stephanie

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