Christians: Giving Christ a Bad Name
This morning I received an e-mail from a friend complaining about the unauthentic lives she was frustrated seeing in so many Christians--how they could act one way on Sunday and yet so differently the other six days. Her frustration was so overwhelming that not even wanting to be associated with the name Christian was becoming a very real desire. Sadly however, her complaint is not a new one and it is certainly not without warrant. All of us, too often, give Christ a really bad name.
What is it that causes this to happen? Is it just that truly following Jesus is so hard that once we leave the safe confines of Christian community we revert to our old default mode within minutes of driving off the church parking lot (if we make it that far)?
It makes us sincerely want to ask, would the real person you are please stand up?! I mean, who are you? The jerk I see on Monday or the pasionate one looking so holy, lost in worship on Sunday . . . And yet, perhaps the dichotomy between the two is not as pronounced as it first seems. Perhaps being a phony Christian actually would mean only playing one side of this Jeckel-and-Hyde game. Perhaps the fact that we still exhibit both the sinful manifestations of the old self and flashes of the new is truer to Scripture (and reality) than we would like to admit.
Yesterday we celebrated communion together as a church. In the morning, I re-read the part of Paul's letter to the Romans where he talks about this internal battle of inconsistency that rages within us: "For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do not do what I want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:19-25 TNIV) Yeah, that about sums it up.
Perhaps authentic Christianity isn't so much the complete arrival of our new self in this lifetime (by the way, this belief was deemed heresy in the first century already) but admittance that we are being torn in two. That we are inconsistent when it comes to who we want to be and who we really are. Besides, whoever told the world that Christians are good people told a horrible lie. We are no better than anyone else. In fact, our track record proves we are often worse!
My dream for our little church is that we would be the place that never attempts to perpetuate this false sense of pride: that in any way we are better than anyone else. I hope our message is just simply this: "Hey, I'm stinking it up over here and need Jesus something fierce. If you've ever felt the same, hop on board. Let's be idiots together . . . idiots who recognize we need Jesus." Maybe then, we could stop giving Christ such a bad name.
3 Comments:
Aaron thank you so much for listening to me and responding to me in my email. I guess you were right that when we want to turn oursleves away from God we actually are becoming more closer to Him than we actually relaize. Who are we to give Christ a bad name? What did he ever do to us that was so bad? Thank you so much!
Ellie
It is true that the more we realize that we all fall, but by God's grace we can get back up again.
God is good, all the time, I thank Him that His grace is completly sufficient for me.
I fear the reason I pronounce one way one day and live a different way the next is purely out of cowardice. It never seems that hard to "walk your talk" when you think of it, but when push comes to shove, it is hard to do.
Soren Kierkegaard once wrote;
"The good intention, the 'Yes', taken in vain, the unfulfilled promise leaves a residue of despair, of dejection. Beware! Good intention can very soon flare up again in more passionate declearations of intention, but only to leave behind even greater desperation. As an alcoholic constantly requires stronger and stronger drink, so the one who has fallen under the spell of good intentions and smooth-sounding decleration constantly requires more and more good intentions. And so he keeps himself from seeing that he is walking backwards."
It is simply easier to fall in line with the crowd and follow the current then to take one's stand. For in a crowd, the conscious loses its power, and good souls turn into residual puddles. C.S. Lewis wrote a very provoking passage on this in Screwtape Proposes a Toast (at the end of The Screwtape Letters). C.S. Lewis went on to warn "Conformity to the social enviornment, at first merely instinctive or even mechanical, now becomes an unacknowledged creed or ideal of Togetherness or Being Like Folks." Kierkegaard writes "Wanting to hid in the crowd, to be a little fraction of the group instead of being an individual, is the most corrupt of all escapes. Grandted, it will make life easier, but it will do so by making it more thoughtless."
Kierkegaard also goes on to write;
"Purity of heart is to will one thing" He says this while refering to James 4:8 which reads:
"Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." To will one thing, to both profess your mind and with your heart, will lead to God. (It should be noted that he goes on to provide his proof that it is spiritually impossible to will pure evil, the soul wants to will God's will).
I find it helpful to remember, and here I will have to quote Kierkegaard one last time;
"In Eternity you will look in vain for the crowd. You will listen in vain to find where the noise and the gathering is, so that you can run to it. For the Infinite One, there is no place, the individual is himself the place...Eternity will examine each person for all that he has chosen and done as an individual before God."
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