What?! Apparently, not everybody in America is a Christian. And some of these so-called "non-Christians" have strong opinions. This takes my breath away, but did you know that sometimes they express these opinions? In the media and in courtrooms! And they get away with that!
Thankfully, Fox News is on the story. They published a piece about it on Christmas Eve. It’s called Beyond the War on Christmas.
1. I wish all of my friends were believers.
But seriously, to my non-Christian friends: I wish that you were believers. I do. Since I believe in God and I believe in heaven and in hell, I believe that it would be better if you knew God and he knew you.
2. When unbelief is better than belief.
But, here’s a little walk-back. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and harmed children. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and were hateful to your parents. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and loudly rejoiced about dead American soldiers and murdered children in Connecticut.
Because I believe that then to God your belief would make little or no difference. And your behavior would disgrace the Lord.
3. The perfect logic of unbelief.
And let’s be clear: if you don’t believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that’s not fainting-spell illogical.
Jesus’s own family tried to restrain him because the crowds were saying that he was crazy. (Mark 3:21.) And those who knew him as he grew up and as a young man were generally unimpressed. ("‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ And they took offense at him." (Matthew 13:55-57 (NRSV).)
As the gospels point out, those who knew Jesus as he grew up and as a young man saw nothing that to them said God-is-with-us. (Although young Jesus was well thought of. (Luke 2:52).)
Yet you, my non-Christian friends, didn’t know Jesus before his ministry, so you don’t have that excuse to be unimpressed. But you might have a better excuse: you know us, your Christian friends.
4. We Christians are unimpressive to your detriment.
The hand in the glove of my wishing that my non-Christian friends believed is that I wish that my Christian friends were more Godly. (Not that any of them do the vile things that I talked about earlier.) I wish also that I were more Godly. Like, I wish I weren’t so selfish.
It’s true: Christians make rude, single-fingered gestures at other Christians on the freeway. We take advantage of others. We look out for ourselves, and we resent having to look out for others, especially if it’s not family, and sometimes even if it is. Our compassion fails. If I meet someone and he calls me "brother", my guard goes up.
Not to say that I have no tenderness toward my fellow believers. In my church, we have a custom in each service of greeting each other and blessing each other with the peace of God. I enjoy this ritual and feel blessed by it.
But of course, these people that I shake hands with, bless, and am blessed by are, for the most part, people who value their religion enough to attend worship every week. I’m grateful to worship in their company. They certainly aren’t Chreasters (folks who show up in church only on Christmas and Easter).
Still, weekly church attendance and gripes when someone says "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" don’t necessarily show that someone has more than a twisty, winded walk with God.
So I concede this: you unbelievers might have some logic and some facts on your side when you’re unimpressed with Jesus because you’re unimpressed with we Christians. And that’s because often we Christian ain’t all that impressive.
5. A pious defense, and its rebuttal.
Now, here I could say something pious like, "We’re not perfect, we’re just forgiven." But I suppose you’d have at least two retorts to that.
First retort: "Not perfect? Try [rude plural noun]!" And that’s right. The news is full of failed and predatory and too-falsely-pious Christians.
Second retort: "Not perfect? Why the hell not?" Fair enough. If Jesus is all that he’s supposed to be, why aren’t we all paragons?
6. Marines: a metaphor.
This issue reminds me of being young and with a young friend. We saw a group of three young, uniformed Marines. They were skinny. My friend said something like, "Those are Marines? I’m not impressed!"
Yet we didn’t know those Marines. We didn’t know their past. We didn’t know how the Marine Corps had shaped them for the better. We didn’t know their present. Just by looking at them, we didn’t know what they knew, what they were capable of. We didn’t know their future. We didn’t know what they would become, which most certainly was more than they were at the moment that my friend and I squinted at their physiques.
And we judged the whole Marine Corps by the three specimens in front of us. Certainly if we had studied Marine Corps heroes, or the history of the Marine Corps, or even if we had seen an example of a Marine who had excelled and thrived in his profession – that would have impressed us.
7. Marine Corps: standards.
Yet among Christians, there usually is less rigor than in the Marine Corps.
Because in the Marine Corps all recruits famously go through boot camp. They get a new vocabulary. They exercise. They learn skills like close combat, how to shoot. They learn all about their weapons. I haven’t gone through boot camp, but by wide reputation I know that it’s hard.
8. Christianity: flab.
But anybody can call himself a Christian who feels like it. By far most churches take whoever walks through the door and finds a seat.
And Christian discipleship isn’t very much. The Bible is our book, but few Christians have read it from cover to cover – never mind more than once. I suspect that our prayer-life is often weak, and so are other exercises through which God might shape us.
Our deliberate building of a relationship with God might be so lackadaisical that it’s a wonder that God has built what he has built in us. If our discipleship is lackadaisical, we might or might not hold onto these gains when trouble comes. Scripture is pessimistic about this.
And modern American Christianity teaches that entry into heaven is easy for all who confess Christ. This tends to sooth believers into a flabby Christianity. If we gain heaven with no effort, why make effort?
This teaching is a historically-recent blight on American Christianity. In a pastoral class I took, the professor told us about a wealthy businessman who was kicked out of the Presbyterian Church at the beginning of the 20th Century. He was kicked out because he claimed assurance of his salvation. The then-prevailing theology was that we may hope in our salvation, but heaven is not assured. I think that that’s the right way to think about salvation
Knowing the love of God is good and needful. But having no fire under us, so to speak, we Christians often let only our upbringing and the happenstance of life shape us – like almost everyone else.
9. Paragons show what’s possible with God.
The results of leisurely Christianity are what they are. But don’t judge God by leisurely Christians. Judge God by the more-than-mediocre Christians.
Judge God by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a German pastor and theologian. He was a pacifist. But he did not cling to his pacifism in the face of his anguish over the crimes of the Third Reich. He joined the plot to kill Hitler. The plot failed. He was arrested, imprisoned, and hanged.
Judge God by St. Francis of Assisi. He rejected his advantaged life as a wealthy heir. He lived in poverty to the glory of God, and he taught others to do the same. He founded the Franciscan order.
Judge God by Corrie ten Boom. Her father and her sister and she were Dutch under the Third Reich occupation of their country. They hid Jews in their home. There was a little Jewish baby who cried. No other rescuer would take the baby because he cried so much that there was great danger of discovery. Corrie ten Boom’s father considered it an honor to risk his life and the life of his daughters for the welfare of a Jewish baby who cried too much. Sadly, before the war ended, they were discovered. Of her small family, only Corrie lived to leave the concentration camp. She spent the rest of her time on the earth spreading the gospel.
Judge God by Sister Margaret McBride. She was excommunicated because, as a member of a hospital ethics committee, she and others approved the abortion that saved the life of a mother of four.
Judge God by Sister Rachele Fassera. In 1996 the raping, torturing, murdering Kony’s army kidnaped 139 Ugandan schoolgirls. Sister Rachele pursued them through the jungle on foot, caught up with them, and convinced the 200 cutthroats to release the great majority of the girls.
Few Christians are Dietrich Bonhoeffer or St. Francis or Corrie ten Boom or Sister Margaret McBride or Sister Rachele Fassera. But some that you’d meet in ordinary churches in ordinary places are impressive in their faith and in their walk with God. Or they’re on the way to being impressive in their faith and in their walk with God. I can’t say how many these are, or what percentage these are among believers. But they are there.
10. Realistic possibilities: a swimming metaphor.
Few people who think about swimming to get fit really expect to end up dolphining across the pool with the speed and grace of an Olympic champion. But that doesn’t keep people from swimming for fitness.
And you wouldn’t judge swimming, either, by the guy who jumps in the pool, swims a couple of lazy laps, strikes up a long conversation with another wall-hanger, swims another couple of lazy laps, and calls that a workout. You would judge it by the person who, even if they started out that way, kept at it until they could swim serious workouts on a regular basis with visible results.
Knowing God takes effort and grace. So look for a Christian who makes serious effort and gets visible results. Judge Christianity and its potential by those who strive and who have about them a penumbra of grace.
And when you become such a person yourself, pray for the rest of us.
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