Research Shows That Being a Christian Makes You Less Like Christ

The preacher man paced back and forth across the stage, banging his fist on an open palm, red-faced, with sweat pouring from his brow. He was building to the climax of his sermon and was about to deliver an impassioned plea to the impressionable young minds before him. I sat in the congregation, and boy-oh-boy, was I desperate to know what I needed to do to please God… or perhaps appease God.

Finally, the preacher arrived at the punchline of his message. He leaned forward across the pulpit and, with a pained expression on his face, delivered the knockout blow. He said…

“If being a Christian were illegal, would there be enough evidence in your life to get you arrested, tried, and convicted beyond all reasonable doubt?”

Then he repeated it for effect.

“Well, gosh,” I thought to myself… “I really don’t know if there would be enough evidence,” and I descended into a pit of anxiety, wondering if I were “Christian” enough for God.

I look back on it now, and I realize that the kind of “evidence” the preacher man was referring to was things like telling your school friends about Jesus, reading your Bible, praying, attending church, and not sinning too much. This was the stuff of performance-based religion.

It has very little to do with actually following Jesus.

I see that now.

The real evidence of Christian faith is expressed primarily in our attitudes and actions towards others rather than jumping through the hoops of religion.

Here’s a real challenge for you: If you call yourself a Christian and you really want to know if there is evidence that Christ has made a difference in your life, then ask a non-Christian: “Would you know I am a Christian if I never told you that I was?”

Be prepared to confront an uncomfortable truth…

An uncomfortable truth

When researching for his book unChristian, David Kinnaman discovered something incredible:

“84% of non-Christians say they know a Christian personally, yet only 15% say the lifestyles of those believers are noticeably different in a good way.”

Or, to put it another way… most people who know a Christian don’t notice any observable positive difference in the life of that Christian. In fact, a study by the Barna Group asked non-Christians about their perception of Christians and discovered that 87% of those surveyed said Christians were judgmental, 85% said Christians were hypocritical, and 78% said Christians were out of touch.

Ouch!

If you’re a Christian, perhaps you rile against these damning statistics. “Those non-Christians have got it all wrong,” you might say. “We are simply misunderstood!”

However, it turns out that, when it comes to hypocrisy, judgementalism, and self-righteousness, many Christians are self-reporting offenders. Guilty as charged! In fact, Christians are statistically more likely to display the actions and attitudes of the Pharisees than they are to display the actions and attitudes of Christ.

How do I know?

I’m glad you asked.

Proof: Christians don’t act like Christ

While surfing the interwebs, I happened to stumble across some research by George Barna — a nationwide project entitled “Christians: More Like Jesus or Pharisees?”

In his research, self-identified Christians were asked to look at twenty different statements — Ten that reflect Christ-like attitudes and behaviors and ten that reflect the self-righteous attitudes and behaviors of the Pharisees. Barna asked survey participants to state their level of agreement with each statement.

Here are the ten statements that Barna used to examine Christ-likeness:

Actions like Jesus:

• “I listen to others to learn their story before telling them about my faith.”
• “In recent years, I have influenced multiple people to consider following Christ.”
• “I regularly choose to have meals with people with very different faith or morals from me.”
• “I try to discover the needs of non-Christians rather than waiting for them to come to me.”
• “I am personally spending time with non-believers to help them follow Jesus.”

Attitudes like Jesus:

• “I see God-given value in every person, regardless of their past or present condition.”
• “I believe God is for everyone.”
• “I see God working in people’s lives, even when they are not following him.”
• “It is more important to help people know God is for them than to make sure they know they are sinners.”
• “I feel compassion for people who are not following God and doing immoral things.”

Self-Righteous Actions:

And here are the ten statements that Barna used to assess self-righteousness:

• “I tell others the most important thing in my life is following God’s rules.”
• “I don’t talk about my sins or struggles. That’s between me and God.”
• “I try to avoid spending time with people who are openly gay or lesbian.”
• “I like to point out those who do not have the right theology or doctrine.”
• “I prefer to serve people who attend my church rather than those outside the church.”

Self-Righteous Attitudes:

• “I find it hard to be friends with people who seem to constantly do the wrong things.”
• “It’s not my responsibility to help people who won’t help themselves.”
• “I feel grateful to be a Christian when I see other people’s failures and flaws.”
• “I believe we should stand against those who are opposed to Christian values.”
• “People who follow God’s rules are better than those who do not.”

The troubling results

Based on these 20 statements, the researchers assessed each individual and assigned them to one of four categories or quadrants. These categories were:

1. Individuals who demonstrated Christ-like action and attitude.
2. Individuals who exhibited Christ-like action but lacked Christ-like attitude.
3. Individuals who possessed Christ-like attitudes but lacked Christ-like action.
4. Individuals who displayed neither Christ-like action nor attitude.

Barna concluded that the majority of self-identified Christians primarily exhibit the attitudes and actions classified as Pharisaical by the researchers. In fact, slightly more than half of the Christian population, using the broadest definition of the term, falls into this category (51%). These individuals tend to display attitudes and actions characterized by self-righteousness.

Conversely, only 14% of today’s self-identified Christians — equivalent to approximately one in every seven individuals — demonstrate attitudes and actions that align with those of Jesus, as identified by the Barna researchers.

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Believing vs. being

It leaves you wondering if professing faith in Jesus Christ actually causes you to become more like Christ or less like Christ. Perhaps it comes down to the individual.

However, I think that this strange phenomenon — where Christians don’t seem to act like Christ — can be explained, in part, by the intense focus that churches seem to give to maintaining correct beliefs and the appearance of living a sin-free life. This is what I call performance-based religion.

It’s all about what you know and do rather than who you are.

Perhaps your experience of church was different, but in my experience, the lion’s share of the teaching and preaching of the church was either about getting people to act the right way (sin management) or getting people to believe the right things. In fact, becoming a Christian amounted to nothing more than intellectual assent to a bunch of so-called facts about Jesus.

After that, the goal of Christianity became about getting others to believe the “right” things and behave the “right” way as well. And we called that evangelism.

As long as you say you believe the “right” things and don’t sin too much publicly, you can call yourself a Christian without ever having to do the uncomfortable work of actually becoming like Christ, something that involves getting beneath the surface — underneath beliefs and behaviors — to find out what’s really going on.

Why do we do the things we do?

What are our hidden motives?

Where does all our negative self-talk come from? (and no… it’s not Satan)

What unnamed biases do we possess?

How can we find healing and freedom from our past trauma?

The church almost never takes people into the deep, dark places to do this kind of work or ask these kinds of questions. It’s too difficult. It’s too messy. It’s too confronting. But these are the places where transformation really takes place.

You become like Christ in the tomb, and you have to spend time in the tomb before you can rise again.

Three days in the belly of a whale will give you the kind of perspective that can deliver you straight to where God wants you.

Forty days in the wilderness wrestling with and overcoming your inner demons — the ones that entice you with the false promises of position, possession, and power — will prepare you to live a life that pleases God.

And going through the fire refines you as gold.

Changing you vs. changing others

Richard Rohr says, “Authentic spirituality is always about changing you. It’s not about trying to change anyone else.”

Ain’t that the truth?

When we make Christianity about trying to get others to conform themselves to the beliefs and patterns of behavior that we expect, it’s no wonder we come across as…

Hypocritical

Judgemental

Self-righteous

Pushy

Rather, the transforming work of Christ involves us taking up our own cross instead of crucifying others.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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