Despite the fact that I hadn’t posted in almost four months, my dear friend Happy was good enough to tag me with a meme that’s going around, courtesy of Good Will Hinton, off the book UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters. Apparently one of the co-authors of the book, Gabe Lyons, is a friend of Will Hinton’s; I’ll admit to knowing nothing more about it than what I’ve read in his post. (As a side note, the whole concept of “memes” has had rather an interesting journey since Richard Dawkins coined the word.)
In any case, the rule of the meme is as follows: name three negative perceptions about Christians and one thing Christians should be known for. Bearing in mind, as others have noted, that this is purely in relation to Western culture in general, and America in particular (my friends from Zimbabwe, for instance, would have a very different response to the question), here goes.
Negative perception #1: Christians are shills for the Republican Party.
This is a base libel on the denomination in which I serve, the Presbyterian Church (USA), whose leaders (like most mainline leaders) are in fact shills for the Democratic Party, thank you very much. . . . That said, there are far too many prominent evangelicals who deserve this label, so there’s rather more than just a grain of truth in it. Politics in America is pretty polarized right now, and the church isn’t really helping much; there are churches which are apolitical and churches which are enmeshed in the political system (on both sides of the aisle), and very few which are modeling a Kingdom perspective on political engagement. Let’s work to change that.
Negative perception #2: Christians are more interested in winning arguments than in caring for people.
I don’t know that this is any truer of Christians than it is of any other group; but it ought to be far less true. Here’s another place where simply by not being different, we fall short.
Negative perception #3: Christians are intolerant.
There are two levels to this one. On one level, by the world’s highly problematic definition of tolerance (which is basically a threadbare mask for apathy), yes, Christians are intolerant—and what’s more, we’re supposed to be. God doesn’t tolerate sin, and neither should we. On another level, though, there are all too many Christians who truly are intolerant, who feel free to reject people whose sins offend them.
The problem comes when we forget that we, too, are sinners, not just those people over there, and that God doesn’t tolerate our sin either; and yet, he doesn’t write us off, nor does he merely tolerate us, but instead, he actively loves us. Lose that, and we lose sight of the fact that even as we refuse to tell people their sin is OK, we must not merely tolerate them, but actively love them.
What Christians should be known for: Living what we believe.
In the terms of James 1:22-27, we’re called to be doers of the word, not merely hearers; which is a pretty major thing. As I put it in my sermon this past Sunday:
What does this mean? It means that if you say you believe the gospel, and it doesn’t change your life, you don’t believe it. If you listen to the preaching of the word, and you nod your head and say, “Good sermon,” and you don’t go out and put it into practice, you don’t believe it. If you read the Bible, and you understand what it’s telling you, and you don’t do everything you can to live accordingly, you don’t believe it. It’s not enough to say the right things, it’s not enough to sing the hymns, it’s not enough to repeat the Creed, it’s not enough to think all the right thoughts—if you don’t do it, if you don’t live this book, then you’re missing something. You might be saved for later, you might have your ticket to heaven punched, but if all this never leaves your head, if it never reaches your hands and your feet, then you aren’t living God’s life now.
You see, we aren’t here just to think certain things, or even to say certain things; it’s not enough just to know God’s word. It’s interesting, that phrase “doer of the word” is an odd one—this is an example of James thinking in Hebrew even though he’s writing in Greek. The Greek verb there is poieo—the noun version, poiēma, is the word from which we get our word “poem”—and it means “to do,” but even more, it means “to make”; and in normal Greek, this would have been read as “maker of words”—in our terms, “wordsmith,” or “poet.” To take the typical Hebrew phrase, “doer of the word,” and just import it into Greek the way he does creates a very interesting bit of wordplay—and a profound one, I think. As Christians, we’re called to be in a very real way God’s poems, to write out his words with our lives, so that people who look at our lives can read his message to them in us.
Put another way, we’re supposed to incarnate the word of God—to make God’s word real in our lives, to wrap the flesh of our lives around the bone of his will and his commands, to become walking examples of his teaching; as we follow Christ, who was the Word of God incarnate, we are called to be “little Christs”—that’s what “Christians” means—to be copies of Christ, copies of the word of God, walking around in this world. The Bible is the word of God written, presenting us with Jesus Christ, the word of God made flesh; and our job is to become the word of God acted out, lived out, in 21st-century America. It’s true, as many have said, that you are the only Bible many people will ever read; it’s also true, says James, that that ought to be enough. If you are the only Bible people have ever read, that ought to be enough to tell them who God is, and who Jesus is, and why they should follow him. That’s what it means to be a doer of the word, and not merely a hearer of the word. That’s what it means for your life to be a poem for God. That, says James, is what it means to be a Christian.“Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” —St. Francis of Assisi
So, to keep the game rolling, I tag:
- Sara
- Jared, Bird, De and the gang (The Thinklings)
- The Calvinator
- Jim Berkley
- Debbie Berkley
