Dallas Willard on "Why are Christians so mean to one another so often?"

quotes from Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ, 2002

Mean Christians: “a mean-spirited suspicion and judgment that mirrors the broader culture … you can be vilified for just the slightest move that is displeasing to someone” 

“Christians are routinely taught by example and word that it is more important to be right [about church traditions] … than it is to be Christlike.  In fact, being right licenses you to be mean, and indeed, requires you to be mean—righteously mean, of course.  You must be hard on people who are wrong, and especially if they are in positions of Christian leadership.  They deserve nothing better.  This is … the practice of ‘condemnation engineering.’” (p. 238) 

Result:  groups of people who “rarely can get along with one another, much less those ‘outside.’ Often their most intimate relations are tangles of reciprocal harm, coldness, and resentment.” — “being ’Christian’ without being Christlike” (p. 239)

Another Result: “multitudes of people (surrounded by churches) who will not be in heaven because they have never, to their knowledge, seen the reality of Christ in a living human being” (p. 239)

(YIKES!!!)