Greentree Community Church

“Jesus, save me from your followers.” So reads a popular bumper sticker. This bumper sticker “prayer” to Jesus is a result of the impression many people have of Christians, namely that Christians are judgmental, holier-than-thou, narrow-minded, intolerant and exclusive—HYPOCRITES!  It often seems that professing Christians are among the most offensive and unrelenting people in the world. Additionally, there have been unjust and oppressive causes throughout history which, “in the name of Christ,” have led to the oppression of many (Inquisition, Crusades, Holocaust, slavery, wife-beating, etc.).  So, I want to do 3 blog entries on a pressing question that the world is asking of Christians, “If God is so good, why are Christians so bad?”

We don’t have to look far to see how badly Christians have stumbled.  Many Christians supported the Inquisition, slavery, racism, apartheid, etc.  But what is more evident today is the smug, self-righteousness, condemning attitude whereby many Christians look down their noses at an “immoral culture in freefall,” and conclude that the only solution is to declare “war” on the surrounding culture.  In addition, all of us know the regular church-goers and Bible thumpers who practice the very things they condemn (see Jimmy Swaggert, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, and Ted Haggard for examples).  Hypocrites tend to be very strong on rules and very hard on people who break them.  They will even shame publicly those who fail at the rules (John 8:3-5), usually under the guise of “teaching everyone a good lesson about sin.”  Then we see in John 8:5-6 that hypocrites both want to execute an adulteress and accuse Jesus because they think he is too soft on sin.  There is a real rush that comes from rejecting and excluding others who don’t measure up to the rules that the hypocrite holds dear.  This is precisely how religious, hypocritical communities justify themselves—they bolster their own egos by positioning themselves to take pride in their own performance and look down with disdain at the failure of others (Luke 18:9-14).  It may be compared to how some dog trainers teach a dog not to pee indoors—when a dog pees on the carpet (and thus fails at the “rules”) the trainer will rub the dog’s face in the mess until the dog is shamed into compliance.

Christian author Philip Yancey, who speaks often with non-Christians about their perception of Christians, almost 100% of the time hears the objection that Christians (unlike Jesus) are narrow-minded, condemning, and exclusive.  Mahatma Gandhi, when asked why he had rejected Christ, replied, “It is not Christ I reject.  It is Christians. I see so few of them living like their master.” This same principle led Karl Marx to his famous conclusion:  “Religion is the opium of the people.”  Christians must listen respectfully to these commentaries.  There indeed have been terrible abuses “in the name of Christ,” which have failed miserably to reflect the real Jesus, who is “full of grace and truth.”  The very fact that so few Christian churches experience the dynamic of “sinners” flocking to them on a regular basis (as was the case with Jesus ), should give Christians pause, and a good reason to take a hard look in the mirror.

I will address these abuses in the next two entries but any Christian’s first response should be repentance.  We should own our past and present mistakes as well as our love of self-righteousness.  I personally have failed to represent Christ well and want to plead for forgiveness from my non-Christian friends and neighbors.  I hope that they will look through me (or past me) to see Jesus as He really is.  So, for Christians, the initial step in the dialogue must not be to defend themselves but rather to repent.   In the next two entries, we’ll see if Christianity has more of a response than repentance but I believe it is the necessary first step.

Note that these 3 entries adapted and developed from work by Rev. Scott Sauls of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC