Deception

I was talking to a co-worker yesterday who had the blessing of going down with a group to New Orleans last week for Mardi Gras. They went down to share the good news with the partiers. One of the things that he told me about was that there were other groups who called themselves Christians, yet acted nothing like Christ asks us to act. Instead of showing love and sharing the good news, they judged and condemned. Now I wasn't there, but I can imagine what the type of people are that he saw. I don't believe that you should leave sin and judgement out of the gospel message (what is good news without telling people what they are saved from?). But I'm also a believer that you "attract more flies with sugar than vinegar" - or however that saying goes.
One of the ways that my co-worker, Eric, described the condemner people, is that they are "deceived". I think that word is so good - it's so much better than heathen, pagan, idiot, moron -- and many other words that some Christians use to describe non-Christians that come off as rude and "I'm better than those sinners". If we truly look at non-Christians as lost and deceived, we can have compassion for them. Good chance that these people have been brainwashed into thinking they're doing the right thing to "save these pagans from destruction". I can admit that I used to think to use any means to save someone from hell regardless of how rude it is was a noble thing to do. Greg Boyd gives analogy that we shouldn't "shoot at the sinners because we need to save them". We're in a war against Satan who is a great deceiver, we're not in a war against flesh and blood.