Tired of Close-Minded Christians?

A common argument/excuse that I hear about why people don't want to go to church is that they don't want to be around close-minded or hypocritical people. They want to interact with open-minded people, but not Christians, because they are close-minded. Isn't that a close-minded statement though? It's like saying "I am open to anything that anyone has to say, except for this rather large group over here." That, in itself, seems like a close-minded contradictory statement. Kind of like the statement "there are NO absolutes."

More often than that, I frequently hear the hypocritical tag thrown around. Christians don't live what they believe, so we shouldn't listen to them - right? Well, right? Not quite. If your doctor smoked, would you ignore his advice about what is good for you? You could - but that would be dangerous for your health. We can gripe about hypocrisy all we want, but even though our doctor may not follow their own advice - it doesn't mean that they are clueless. They are probably telling us the right stuff. Somewhere along the line, the American culture has bought in to the lie that hypocrites are automatically wrong in everything they say, just because they are hypocritical. Of course, I could also go into how we are all hypocritical in some way, but that is another subject....

When people throw around the hypocrisy tag, what they are really saying is "I want to ignore what God is saying and blame it on his followers, even though by calling them hypocrites I am acknowledging that they are not doing what God would want them to, anyway."