The Accuser wants us to accuse others. He wants us to be like him. He will do all he can to stop us listening to fair minded people who genuinely care for the poor and oppressed. He doesn’t want us to judge fairly. Satan deceives people into accusing good people. And he deceives others into believing those accusations. Satan wants good people to be called the worst of names—names like racist, Nazi, Uncle Tom, homophobe, Islamophobe etc. And because those names stick, most people don’t bother to give the accused a fair hearing. Without a second thought, they dismiss such people by repeating those same accusations.
Now the accused may well be one or more of those things, but how do you know if you’ve never given that person a fair hearing?
“But someone I trust said they are a racist!”
So?
How do you know that the person you trust simply isn’t repeating something they’ve heard? How do you know they haven’t been deceived?
A good person gives everyone a fair hearing. Is someone called a communist? Or perhaps a capitalist? Read one of their books for yourself. Is someone called a homophobe? Read something they’ve written. Has someone been called a Nazi, an Islamophobe, an Uncle Tom? Read one of their books.
If they have been rightly accused of one or more of those things, you’ll know after reading one of their books. And if they’ve been falsely accused, you’ll also know. (And then you’ll know who to believe.)
A good example of a good man who has been falsely accused (by someone in a leading institution) is Mark Durie (see chapter 16 of his book Which God?: Jesus, Holy Spirit, God in Christianity and Islam).
If you haven’t read any of Durie’s books, I strongly encourage you to read The Third Choice.
If enough Christians do not learn to judge fairly, Christians will be falsely accused of all sorts of things, then the salt will be taken out and trampled on (see Matt 5:13).