Despised for His Sake

Today I read 1 Corinthians 4 and I'll be completely honest, I didn't get a whole lot out of it. About the only thing I took away from my reading today is Paul is telling the Saints that the Apostles are despised of men because of their testimony of Christ. I have often wondered why religion seems to make perfectly reasonable people behave so erratically. Religion is one of those things that causes strife, contention and wars. It's so sad that the good news of the Gospel, which is designed to uplift the poor in spirit and comfort the afflicted causes men and women to behave so poorly.

I remember as a missionary how people would react to me. Most were polite and friendly, but I had several instances where people treated me quite poorly. For example I once had a person throw their can of beer at my head as I was biking along. I hadn't even said anything to the person and they threw it at me. By the trajectory of the can, it was not empty either. A person would rather waste a portion of their beer by trying to hit me with it than drink it. That's crazy. I had people turn their dogs loose on me, insult me and swear at me. I was literally hated by some people. And they knew absolutely nothing about me beyond the fact that I was a Latter-day Saint missionary. They were treating me that poorly based on that assumption alone.

Like the Apostles of old, I was being mistreated because I represented Jesus Christ. It is as simple as that. And we can't help it if that is how people treat us in this life. All we can control is how we respond to those people who treat us poorly. But that's how it is with any situation in life, we can only control our own actions, we cannot control the actions of others. As representatives of Jesus Christ and His church, through our baptismal covenant, we are to behave in such a way that Jesus Christ can be proud of us no matter what. We must not rise to the bait that others place before us when they want to argue about scriptures and want to prove us wrong. We must behave in the manner that Jesus Christ Himself would if He were here. Our garments must remain spotless as it were. Until tomorrow.