I would like to clarify a few things before proceeding with this blog post:
- In this context, by "Christian" I'm referring to actual practicing believers, those who actually deeply believe in Christianity and the Bible, and who practice it very regularly, even daily, in prayers, in thoughts, in "conversations with God", in Bible study, in participation with other believers, in regularly (at least weekly) attending sermons and church events and so on. For the most part this does not include people who are "nominally Christians", who might perhaps classify themselves as Christian, but who live pretty much 100% a secular life, with perhaps at most attending some church service once or twice a year (most often during Christmas.)
- Even among the practicing believers there's a great variety in personalities, thoughts and attitudes, so this does not apply necessarily to all of them (thus the use of the word "most" in the title of this post.)
- I am speaking from personal experience, as I myself felt this and saw clear signs of others feeling the same.
One of the most fundamental teachings of Christianity, in most of its denominations, is humility: In fact, arrogance is often considered a sin, or at a very minimum inappropriate behavior for a good Christian believer. According to this belief, we are all sinful, we are all flawed, we are all the lowest of the low in the eyes of God, and the only way we can be redeemed of own sinful nature is by the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. Most denominations even strongly assert that there's nothing we can personally do, no actions, no works, that would redeem us, and that the only way we can be redeemed is by God's grace, nothing else.
This, of course, means that Christians should never consider themselves to be somehow better or superior to other people, fellow human beings, even non-believers. Christians may have been saved by the grace of God, but that does not make them "better" or "superior" to others: They are still lowly sinners, the lowest of the low, and they should be aware of this and show humility about it. All the glory goes to God, not to yourself, for being saved. We are all on the same boat, together, believers and non-believers, there are no "first class" and "second class" decks on this boat: We are all equal in the eyes of God, and we must always remember that. Never allow God having shown mercy and grace to you to go to your head, and start believing that you are somehow "better" and "superior" to non-believers.
I would say that most Christians would agree with this sentiment, at least in general.
Yet, in actual reality, particularly in certain denominations, this is not the case. I have personally experienced this, and clearly seen the same on others, by how they talked about "the world" and non-believers, and what their attitudes were.
Even though outwardly they will claim humility and would agree with the above sentiment, they can't help but feel some sense of superiority, feeling above "the world", the non-believers, the "unsaved", even if they would never admit it out loud.
As an example, there are tons and tons of secular songs, poems and works of literature and performing arts that talk about love, how beautiful love is, how pure it is, how positive it is. Yet, many of these Christians can't help but to have an attitude that non-believers cannot know what "true" love is, that they can only know a lower "worldly" love. They may have (at some level) the attitude that non-believers might think they understand what true love is, but they are just deluded, and they don't really know, they can't really know, because they have not experienced the grace of God, and thus what true love is. These believers may think that even the romantic love felt by two Christian spouses for each other is superior to that felt by a non-believer couple.
It's not, at least not usually, that they outright denigrate or dismiss "worldly" love, but they still have this attitude that it's somehow "lesser" because the non-believers think that they know what true love is, but they actually don't. Although there are probably some Christians who do not concede even this much, and probably think that "worldly" love among non-believers is corrupted and worthless and perhaps even sinful if not outright satanic. That only true saved Christians are able to feel actual true pure love that emanates from God himself, rather than the corrupted version that emanates from "the world".
It's difficult to express the attitude, but in many cases it is a sense of superiority, a sense of "only we, the true believers, know what actual love is, unlike all the non-believers who don't really."
And while "love" is one of the most prominent examples of this kind of superiority thinking, it's not the only one. There are many others, usually related to what's considered good, such as compassion, empathy, charity and other forms of good towards others.
I know this feeling because I did feel it myself at one point, for this exact reason. And I clearly could see others feeling the same, based on how they talked about the subject. In retrospect, it's a rather arrogant attitude, which is rather ironic.
