PART 3: WHY ARE (SOME) CHRISTIANS SO MEAN?

One friend posted a comment of mine on their Facebook page last week that said “If you would shoot your enemy in the head, you might not be a Christian” and the comments that followed that simple truth were deeply disturbing to me, especially the ones that cried “Bulls**t!”, and “Keith Giles is soooo wrong” and my favorite, “This Keith Giles is a gut-shooter, not a head-shooter, a dumb-ass playing games.” [Nice].

It starts to make you wonder, “How can Christians who follow the One who said ‘Love your enemies’ respond to this comment in this way?” Are they unaware of their Savior’s teaching? Are they willfully ignorant of what He meant by this statement? Or are they mostly confused by how to apply His teachings in everyday life?

Reason #3 – Christians in America are confused about the Old and New Covenant.

As one commenter to that same post said, “I get a little confused with Old Testament vs New…is everything in the OT about war and defending (oneself) null after Jesus died?”

I think it’s this fundamental misunderstanding of how the Old Covenant and the New Covenant work together that allows us to call ourselves “Christians” without actually following Christ.

Jesus said that He came “not to abolish the Law and the Prophets” but to “fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17)

But, in what way did Jesus “fulfill the Law and the Prophets”? Most Christians are taught that this statement implies that the Old Testament Scriptures are still intact. However, that’s not at all what Jesus meant. As the writer of Hebrews explains:

“By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.” (Hebrews 8:13)

So, when Christ fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, He accomplished what they were pointing to and prophesying about. Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant, and now we are under a new and everlasting covenant. Rather than become enslaved again to the Old Covenant Laws, we are free to follow Jesus and we therefore are bound to obey Him.

This means that when Jesus says, “Love your enemies” we need to actually do that and not shoot them in the head (or anywhere else). And when Jesus says, “If you do not forgive those who sin against you, then your Heavenly Father will not forgive your sins either” we need to start forgiving people. (see Matthew 6:14-15).

Want further proof that Christians today don’t understand the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant? Let me ask you to tell me what the New Covenant is. Honestly, most Christians I ask have no idea what the New Covenant actually is. (Hint: You can find out in Hebrews 8:8-10; and Jeremiah 31:31-34).

See, when we fail to obey Jesus we start to act mean, and the reason why is that following Jesus is meant to transform us into the image of Christ. In other words, if we’re not following Jesus there’s no hope of ever actually becoming like Jesus. Only when we die to ourselves (daily)and deny our selfish, human (i.e. “mean”) impulses and actions, do we get anywhere near actually becoming like Christ.

It’s a little frustrating to me that I even need to write this down or explain this to anyone. It should be such a simple, basic idea to everyone that a follower of Jesus would be like Jesus.

 

How in the world have we gotten the idea that one can be a Christian but not follow Christ? This would be like a Muslim refusing to obey the Koran. Or a Jew who has no clue about Moses or his teachings. Either you’re a follower of Jesus and you take Him seriously, or you are not following Jesus and you should just go ahead and call yourself a humanist who does what he feels like. You can’t have it both ways.

We act nothing like Jesus because we have not been told we should follow Jesus’ teachings. We do not obey Jesus because we do not think of ourselves as “Disciples” but as “Believers” who accept a certain set of doctrines and we dare anyone to say we’re not really “Christians” even though we don’t act like Jesus.

For the record, the followers of Jesus were first called “Christians” in Antioch back in the first century. You want to know why? Because they were all so much like Jesus that their enemies called them “Little Christs” – which is what “Christians” actually means.

If those Antioch pagans could come to America, I don’t think they’d call us “Christians” today.

Yes, I’d say that the Church in America is some serious trouble, and if we don’t start embracing the New Covenant that Jesus died to initiate, and die to ourselves to receive it, then we will be nothing but a nation of Mean Christians who have no idea who Jesus is, or what it means to follow Him.

-kg

[END PART 3]

 

PART 2: WHY ARE (SOME) CHRISTIANS SO MEAN?

Reason #2 – Christians in America don’t know what makes you a Christian

I think the second reason that some Christians are so mean – or act nothing like Jesus – is because we evangelize people the wrong way. By that I mean that we tell people that they are “Christians” if they have prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer” regardless of how they are living their lives right now.

This “Sinner’s Prayer” appears nowhere in the Bible, by the way. It’s just something we made up to make it easier to evangelize. This focus on ease of conversion is part of what’s wrong with the Church today. Rather than to invite people to follow Jesus (become Disciples) and obey Him in their actual lives, we urge them to repeat after us: “Jesus I believe that you died on the cross for my sins and that you rose from the dead and that you are coming back to take me to live with you in Heaven one day. Thank you Jesus for your gift of eternal life which I receive today. Amen.”

Once we get people to repeat this prayer (or something like it) we tell them that they are now “Christians”. Of course, getting them to pray that prayer isn’t so difficult if you start off by asking them something like, “Do you know that if you died tonight you would be in Heaven tomorrow?” or maybe even “With every head bowed and every eye closed, please just quickly raise your hand if you don’t want to burn in hell forever. I see that hand, thank you.” And then we ask them to repeat that magic prayer and – voila - they will go to heaven when they die.

Of course, Jesus had a slightly different method. First of all he called for people to follow Him. Not too complicated. Might actually fit that on a bumper sticker. But then He added that if anyone wanted to follow Him (become a disciple) they would have to give up just one thing – He called it “everything.”

“Those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.” (Luke 14:33)

And

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

This is pretty different, I’ll admit. Notice that Jesus doesn’t ask anyone about a preference for burning forever or not. Notice that He doesn’t ask them to repeat any magic prayers. Later on, just before He left His Kingdom in the hands of those same disciples He added this part:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

So, Jesus expected us to make more followers (disciples) and then to “teach them to obey everything (He) commanded.”

Obedience is part of the package, according to Jesus. If you’re going to call yourself a “follower of Jesus” you might just have to, you know, follow Him and stuff.

This sort of theology allows people to think that just because they repeated a prayer when they were nine years old, they can go ahead and live any way they want – even become a Satanist or a Hindu, or whatever – and still go to heaven when they die. But that’s not what Jesus says. He says that only those who “remain in (Him)” have life and those who do not remain in Him do not have life. In fact, those who do not remain in Christ are the ones who will be “like a branch that is cast out..and thrown into the fire and burned” (John 15:6)

Trust me, if you prayed a prayer a few years ago but today you are far away from Christ and you are not remaining in fellowship and relationship with Jesus, you will not end up where you wanted to be. Or, as Paul says in Collosians 3:3-4:

“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

The problem is that we’ve turned salvation into a “thing”. We’ve overstressed the fact that salvation is a “gift” and then carried that metaphor out to an illogical (and heretical) conclusion.

Yes, salvation is a gift from God, in the sense that it is free and you don’t deserve it. But it’s not a gift in the sense that you can take it (like a pair of socks) and wear it apart from the one who gave it to you. That’s not how salvation works. Apart from Christ there is no life. Those who are in Christ have life, those who do not have Christ do not have life. Therefore, we need to remain in Christ and as long as we cling to Jesus we have that life.

Or, as the Apostle John states it:

“And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (1 John 5:11-12)

If you prayed a prayer just so that you could go to Heaven when you die, you might not be a Christian.

 

I urge you to take a moment and pray a different sort of prayer. Something that takes into account that you are alive today and that you want your life to be lived in Christ right now. This prayer should be about surrendering your will and your attitudes to Christ Jesus, and dying to yourself so that Jesus’ life can fill you on the inside and spill out to those on the outside.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

See? Isn’t that better? Now, the deal is you will need to do this again tomorrow. All of us need to daily take up our cross and die (over and over again) so that Christ can live in us.

If we do that, we might just avoid being mean to others and at the very least we will be doing our best to obey Jesus in our actual lives. That means loving others, forgiving those who offend us, and serving the people He puts in our path.

Try it! It’s pretty amazing.

-kg

[END PART TWO]

WHY ARE (SOME) CHRISTIANS SO MEAN? – PART 1

It happens far too often. We hear stories like the one my non-Christian friend shared with me last week where someone she knows was turned away from a local church and asked to leave the property because it "looked bad" that she was crying in front of their building.

Of course, the woman’s daughter was missing, she was close to losing her apartment due to HUD restrictions limiting her ability to care for her grand daughter, and she needed help with food and clothes for this little one. Luckily, this elderly woman, with her grandchild in tow, ended up down the street at a secular organization which fed her grand child, referred her to a food bank, and even put some cash in her hand while the volunteers behind the counter scrambled to find clothing for the little girl and a dedicated social worker to help her with housing needs.

What’s wrong with this picture? How could the woman with the hungry grandchild be turned away by the people who profess to follow someone who said “Whatever you’ve done for the least of these you’ve done it to me”, and receive help from those who do not?

It’s almost a modern day Good Samaritan story, isn’t it? Except that it’s not a story. It’s real.

So, how is it that Christians can be so insensitive and mean? What’s going on here?

In this short series of articles to follow, I hope to shed some light on this troubling phenomenon.

Honestly, I believe there are a variety of reasons for this aberrant behavior, the first one being that Christians in America define themselves by the things they believe, not by their attitudes or behaviors.

Reason #1 – Christians in America are defined by doctrines.

This idea goes all the way back to the third century when Emperor Constantine was allowed to define what it meant to be a Christian. Before this, the Christian church (as evidenced by the New Testament writings and early church practice) defined Christianity as a way of living that mirrored the life of Jesus. This is why Paul the Apostle was so adamant that the early Christians not associate with those who called themselves Christians but refused to actually obey His teachings.

“But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.” (1 Cor. 5:11)

Ironically, in this same passage, Paul makes a point that he’s not talking about non-believers who behave this way. Not at all:

“…not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.” (1 Cor. 5:10)

Somehow Christians in America have gotten this backwards. They refuse to associate with “worldly” people who don’t act Christian, but have a very high tolerance for people within the Church who don’t act like Jesus.

But it’s not our tolerance for this behavior that has led us to this unsettling situation. It’s our definition of who a Christian really is.

When Constantine showed up and helped to end the persecution of Christians with the edict of Milan in 313, many (but not all) Christians hailed him as a hero, and even welcomed his influence in the affairs of the church. Possibly this was because Constantine granted their leaders tax exemptions and put many of them on the Roman payroll, perhaps?

At any rate, Constantine did what no Emperor had ever done before – he influenced the church to codify a statement of orthodoxy – a set of core beliefs – that defined what “true” Christianity was all about.

 

Before this the early church disagreed on a number of doctrinal points, and even freely dis-fellowshipped themselves from those who taught heresy (as they defined it). But, until Constantine officially declared what made Christians “Christian” the only criteria was a simple faith in Christ and a sincere desire to put His teachings into practice. Granted, some might disagree with you on a few points of doctrine, but they wouldn’t have killed you for it. We have Constantine to thank for that eventual practice.

Fast forward a few hundred years and nothing much has changed. Pastors and churches are still exempt from taxes, they are still useful to propagate the policies of the Empire, and Christianity is still defined as an agreement with a set of core doctrines.

This is why you can now call yourself a Christian and disobey Christ’s command to care for the orphan and the widow. Because if you have agreed with the Statement of Faith (the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the Resurrection, etc.) then you are absolutely a Christian, and your actions are not taken into account.

Of course, this is in direct contradiction to Jesus’ words that:

 

“they will know that you are my disciples (followers) if you love one another” (John 13:35)

 

and

 

“Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.” (John 14:21)

 

and

 

“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.” (John 14:23-24).

So, basically, as long as you take a new believer’s class or agree with a detailed “Statement of Faith” you’ll be considered a Christian by almost every Church in America today. In spite of the fact that you may not follow Jesus, obey Jesus, or have any intention of learning what Jesus commanded His followers to do.

For the record, if you can turn away someone in need who comes to you begging for help, you might not be a Christian. Or, as the Apostle John asks,

 

“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” (1 John 3:17)

Christians in America desperately need to redefine themselves as people who are doing their best to put the words of Jesus into action. Otherwise, we’ll be left with a Church that looks and acts nothing like Jesus.

-kg

[END PART ONE]