Things Christians Need to Stop Saying
Thus is something that, as a Christian, I have been thinking about a lot: things Christians need to stop saying if they want others to take our faith seriously. The following three things are platitudes/arguments that I feel do more to hurt peoples' perception of Christianity more than help it. They are:
"Everything happens for a reason:" The Bible doesn't actually say this. It says that God has a plan, but for the record, that plan could be "ruin your life to win a bet with Satan." To speak plainly, saying that "Everything happens for a reason" does not do much to comfort people going through a hard time. They might just decide that God is a d***. It's better to say that God's plans are unknowable, and yes, it might be hard to see any good come out of this right now. However, there are plenty of times in the Bible where God's followers wondered how anything that was happening turned out for the better, but eventually, they did, so be patient.
"God hates [insert group here]:" He rather explicitly does not. God loves everyone, even those who society shuns. He even loves those who break his commandments, even if he's disappointed in them. At the end of the day, though, everyone has done something that God disapproves of at some point, so before you start talking about who God supposedly hates, maybe think about how that might apply to you, too.
"Hate the sin, love the sinner:" Technically true, but severely misused. Too often it's used as an excuse to continue hating the sinner without the compassion implied by that statement. If you go out of your way to make a sinner's life miserable without doing anything to help them change for the better, you just hate them. There's no love involved.
Any other things that the rest of you think Christians should stop saying?