Imagine for a moment that everything you knew about Christ was taken from the Gospels and that you were able to muster a reasonable level of trust in the historicity of these documents.
You might conclude that Jesus was overwhelmingly merciful, kind, compassionate, and gracious. You might notice that Jesus had a propensity to criticize people and institutions established to oppress and despotize in the name of religion. You might notice that injustice and the misuse of power angered Jesus. You might observe that Jesus regarded women and children with a counter-cultural level of dignity and respect. You might even decide that he was a miracle-working healer.
You may or may not be able to take the leap to believe he was the very Son of God, but you would, at least, conclude he was a good man who lived a compelling life and died a heroic death. However, the reality is, for most people, what we believe about Jesus comes to us through the filter of people who say they know Christ.
I’m talking about Christians.
Mahatma Gandhi once famously said of the Christian faith: “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Gandhi’s scathing assessment was that far too often, Christians don’t represent Christ. They are nothing like Christ. They don’t do Christ justice. They actually repel people from Christ.
Was Gandhi onto something?
Why people aren’t interested in the Christian faith
In 2017, McCrindle Research conducted a comprehensive survey of the spiritual landscape of a nation that typifies the post-Christian attitudes of the Western World — Australia. Over a thousand adults were quizzed on their perceptions of Jesus, the church, and Christianity in general.
The results make for both interesting and troubling reading. If you were to summarize it, you would be forced to conclude that it is not Christ that repels people from belief, but ‘Christian’ dogma, systems, abuses of power, and certain behaviors and attitudes that have regretfully become associated with Christians.
McCrindle asked the participants to identify issues, behaviors, and attitudes — past or present — that were most likely to prevent them from ever exploring the Christian faith. In other words, they were asked to identify the biggest “turn-offs.” Respondents were able to select more than one option. Here is what they said:
Number 1: Child Abuse
57% of respondents identified child abuse as the number one behavior blocker to exploring the Christian faith. Now, obviously, the overwhelming majority of Christians are not child abusers. However, the reputation of Christians has suffered terribly at the hands of a small minority.
Few topics elicit more emotion and outrage from the public than sexual abuse committed by Christian leaders, and for good reason. The best available data reports that 4 percent of Catholic priests sexually violated a minor during the second half of the 20th century, with the peak level of abuse being in the 1970s.
Putting clergy abuse in context, though, research from the US Department of Education found that about 5–7 percent of public school teachers engaged in similar sexually abusive behavior with their students during a similar time frame. Yet, teachers are not automatically associated with child abuse in the same way that priests are.
Don’t get me wrong. Child abuse is abhorrent in all its forms. However, the main reason we find it particularly abhorrent in church leaders is that there is an expectation of the highest level of integrity from those who purport to represent God himself. Fair enough! When you establish yourself as morally superior, you have much further to fall if you fail to meet that standard.
There is nothing that the church can do to change the past. It can only do its best to prevent child abuse in the future, but I suspect that it will take many decades for the wounds to heal — if indeed they ever do.
Number 2: Hypocrisy
47% of respondents said that the hypocrisy they observed in Christians was a major blocker to exploring the Christian faith. To be fair, everyone is a hypocrite to some extent, right? I mean, what person meets the standards that they set for themselves all the time? So, why is hypocrisy such a turn-off in Christians?
Once again, I think the problem begins when Christians think or act as though they possess some kind of moral superiority that they have acquired by default, simply through intellectual assent to someone’s interpretation of some Biblical truths. If you loudly proclaim your beliefs and sometimes force them on others, you had better live in a way that supports those claims.
At my workplace, there is a person who is loudly and proudly a born-again Christian — a fact that they are more than happy to share. They are also the kind of gossip-mongering, rumor-spreading, corner-cutting, brown-nosing, sluggard that no one really likes working with. If you’re going to proclaim your faith out loud, fine! Just make sure your life matches up!
Image by Twinsterphoto on Shutterstock
Number 3: Religious wars
45% of respondents said that religious wars were a major blocker to exploring the Christian faith. This is perhaps the only objection to the Christian faith that I think is slightly unfair. It is true that religion is the root cause of a number of wars, but not as many as people might think. According to the Encyclopedia of Wars, out of 1,763 known/recorded historical conflicts, 123, or just 6.98%, had religion as their primary cause.
However, when you bring it down to a micro-level, perhaps there is some credence to the claim that religion causes wars. In many communities, families, and churches, religious disagreements have causes all kinds of hurtful and hateful actions. I’ve heard of churches splitting over the position of the communion table in the sanctuary, of families disowning children who dare to intermarry with people of different denominations, and of religion being used to justify all kinds of atrocities — slavery, oppression, and racism.
Number 4: Judgmentalism
43% of respondents said that the judgmental attitudes in Christians were a major blocker to exploring the Christian faith. Being judgmental isn’t just a bad marketing strategy; it is also terrible theology. We are told again, and again that judgment belongs to God alone, and Jesus made his views on human judgment very public in Matthew 7: “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.” And yet, Christians so often come across as judgmental. It’s a strange place to land.
Number 5: Issues around money
40% of respondents said that issues around money were a major blocker to exploring the Christian faith. Specifically, there was a perception that “The church is just after my money.” It is true that at your average church service, there is a call for financial gifts in the form of tithes and offerings. I don’t have a problem with this practice personally. After all, churches, like all organizations, need money to function. However, I do have a problem when churches insinuate that the giving of finance will somehow unlock the blessing of God. The more you give, the greater the blessing. Commonly known as the prosperity gospel, it is nothing more than blatant manipulation.
Number 6: Attitudes toward LGBTIQ+ community
33% of respondents indicated that the church’s attitudes towards the LGBTIQ+ were likely to prevent them from ever exploring the Christian faith. A study by the Barna Group conducted among 16–29 year-olds asked non-Christians about their perception of Christians. According to this survey, the most common perception of Christians among non-believers is that Christians are anti-gay, with 91% of non-Christians saying they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards the LGBTIQ+ community and make homosexuality a bigger sin than anything else. A large portion of society has moved towards full acceptance of the LGBTIQ+ community, while the church lags behind.
Number 7: Hell and condemnation
24% of respondents indicated that the way the church uses the threat of hell to coerce people into making faith commitments is a major turn-off. I will admit it. When I was a teenager, I prayed the ‘Sinner’s Prayer.’ I accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior, largely because of the “If you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?” sermon that evangelists seem to love. Again, this is nothing more than manipulation. If the church must resort to fear and guilt as a recruitment strategy, then the product they are peddling really isn’t worth your time.
Image by Dmitry Demidovich on Shutterstock
Number 8: The problem of suffering
24% of respondents stumbled on the question of suffering — namely, “If God is so good, why is there so much suffering in the world?” In reality, this is an existential problem for people of all faiths and even people of no faith. Every worldview must offer up an answer to the question, “Why do bad things happen?” However, I think that Christians have done themselves a great disservice by dismissing this legitimate question with pat — and often trite — answers like these: “God works in mysterious ways. It’s all because of sin. All things work together for the good of those who love God. Just have faith.”
What a pity that the church has failed to engage with this question at a deeper level. Personally, I think the Christian faith offers some of the most satisfactory answers to this troubling question for all faith systems. Perhaps I will write about that in a future article!
Number 9: Outdated gender roles
21% of respondents listed the church’s approach to gender roles as a stumbling block to them every considering the Christian faith. Many Christian churches ascribe to a form of “benevolent patriarchy” commonly known as Complementarianism. This belief gives men authority over the wife and children and only allows men to be church leaders. Women are expected to submit unilaterally to men, fathers, husbands, and pastors. However, as the modern, Western world continues its relentless and necessary march towards equality, patriarchal structures and systems are rightly viewed as unacceptable and outdated.
Number 10: The Bible
20% of respondents listed the Bible as an issue that would prevent them from exploring Christianity. This might seem slightly ironic, given that the Christian worldview relies largely on the Biblical narrative. However, the more specific objection relates to two matters. Firstly, it is difficult in parts to take the Bible as literal, historical truth. Was Jonah actually swallowed by a real whale? It’s hard to accept this as fact, isn’t it? While I do believe that to actually be a Christian requires a faith agreement with certain things that seem implausible — such as the resurrection of Christ — it does not require you to take every part of the Bible literally.
The second objection that people have with the Bible is that, when viewed through a twenty-first-century worldview, some of the events and actions in the Bible seem morally reprehensible. Stoning people to death? Genocide? Rape? It’s all in the Bible. However, does its presence in the Bible indicate God’s agreement with the practice? I have my doubts personally.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Number 11: Science & Evolution
18% of respondents listed science and evolution as reasons they would not engage in the Christian faith. The church has indeed, far too often, set itself up as the enemy of Science. However, I personally believe that Science and faith should be able to enjoy a peaceful co-existence.
Evolution is a classic example. Some hardcore Christians would argue that evolution is nonsense. However, many Christians can see the good reasons why acceptance of an evolutionary process makes sense and that it does not undermine the creation narrative at all. Christians believe that God made the world. Whether or not he did it by snapping his fingers, or initiating an evolutionary process that took billions of years, is immaterial to the overarching narrative.
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I Like Christ, But Not Christians
Frederick Douglas, an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman, was quoted in Time magazine:
“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference — so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”
Face it.
The Church, and much of modern Christianity, has an image problem that is sadly and largely deserved. One final observation from the McCrindle Research: According to this survey, the number one factor that attracted people to Christianity was observing someone actually living out a genuine faith.
How about that!
It’s time for Christians to return to the simple truths communicated by a humble carpenter in first-century Palestine — a man who would ultimately die to make God as accessible as possible to all people. It must sadden him greatly that the church is now one of the biggest obstacles to belief in Him.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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