Don't F**k With Unbelievers and the Afterlife
"Don’t F**K With UnBelievers and The Afterlife" by Shawn McCraney challenges traditional Christian views on judgment and condemnation of unbelievers, advocating for a faith centered on love, understanding and acceptance. The book argues that historical misinterpretations have led believers to treat nonbelievers with anger and judgment, contrary to the teachings of Christ's victory, which should inspire love and spiritual freedom. It explores fulfillment theology, suggesting that the traditional concepts of sin, death, and hell have been transformed, and encourages believers to reflect God's love through patience, humility, and respect.
Sample: Introduction: Don't F**k With Unbelievers and the Afterlife
In the face of all that has been presented in the first five books of this series, (Don’t F**k with Jesus, God, the Spirit, Christian Doctrine and Believers) we come to the end of our insights where we address how true worshippers of the Father see and treat the unbelieving world around them. The standard fare attitude Christians maintain toward the unbelieving world ranges from anger, judgement and even hateful condemnation and from this persons point of view it seems that believers have pretty much missed the mark – historically and on out to the present day.
Perhaps the biggest contributors to this collective fail on the part of believers toward the unbelieving world is an almost ubiquitous misinterpretation of the biblical narrative which has fomented into religious traditions that have then been passed down for generations causing people thinking, speaking and acting in a way with which they think God admires. But the fact of the matter is God wants His children to think, speak and act in love and trusting that He is the judge, and He is the overseer of Man.
Because there are sections of scripture where prophets of old run their mouths at wickedness or Jesus and His apostles doing the same (with Jesus it was always at the religious rulers of the day) somehow the context and age of these recitals are ignored and many Bible readers today (and yesteryear) have somehow concluded that they ought to assume a similar mantle and call people out on their pagan ways. The fact of the matter is everything we read in the sacred text, from the Creation to Revelation, is purposed to show how God has worked to reconcile the world to Himself through the birth, life, death, resurrection and return of His Son. With all of that being done, and Jesus having had the victory over Satan, sin, hell and death (1st Corinthians 15:26), God brought the collective world forevermore back to the original place of Adam and Eve with all of us standing in the garden, as it were, and deciding whether to choose to listen to God or not.
Therefore, along with the Law of Sin and Death, the economy of judgment and criticism should have died nearly two thousand years ago, and believers ought to be known only for their love, manifested in patience and longsuffering toward others instead of condemnation and judgement.
This perspective is difficult for believers to embrace because they traditionally cannot fathom the idea that Jesus has returned for His Bride, as promised, and that this return launched the world into an entirely new dispensation – one of freedom and the liberty to live as one pleases and to choose what one desires. Those who from the heart seek to worship the Father in Spirit and Truth will, and those who have no interest in such activities will not, and life is given freely to all by a loving God, who being just, will reward (not punish) everyone according to their life choices.
From this position of fulfillment Christians might see the human existence as a proving ground or sorts, proving more in the sense of God tempering all souls in the fires of life; fires that all people personally choose to pass through or run from. We might see the human experience as a time where God seeks true worshippers out of the masses of humanity, loving and blessing all of His creations, but watching as some, from the heart, desire to truly discover, know and worship Him.
The question then becomes, “what about all the rest?” Jesus plainly taught that the way to the Father is narrow and twisted up, hard to pass through and limited. In the same breath He also taught that the way (to destruction for them/then) was broad and wide. With so many people today increasingly wanting to know less and less about God, how should Christians perceive and treat the rest of this indifferent world?
Perhaps the place to start is to discuss the afterlife picture for all souls since the life, death, resurrection and return of Christ for His holy and unblemished Bride. From there we can then reorganize our thinking and opinions about the unbelieving world around us and ways to engage with them that transcend what has been.