Friday, December 25, 2015

Why I'm Not a Christian

“Why doesn’t their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up? I thought I was a Christian but I’m not. I’m something else and I don’t know what. Everything I have ever taken for right and wrong these people have taught me – these same, these very people. So it’s me, it’s not them. Something has happened to me.”  Jean Louise “Scout” Finch in Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman”

I recently read this book, and the passage above really struck me. For the last several months I’ve been feeling the same way about the church. Before anyone gets too excited, I’m not talking about my church, or any church in particular, I’m talking about the Christian church, or at least the US variety of the Christian church.

And before anyone gets too excited, I would prefer to be a devoted follower of Jesus Christ rather than a Christian, that would be my “something else”. Now, you may believe this is purely semantics, but I would beg to differ, and I’ll eventually get there.

Recently we had the opportunity to watch a sermon series by Andy Stanley titled “Brand:New”. The series was phenomenal, and the basic premise of it centered on Matthew 22:36-40. When Jesus was asked, what was the greatest commandment, He replied:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Pastor Stanley further distills it down and says, God is OK with us not loving Him with our whole heart, He’s God of course, the most important commandment, the most important thing for us to do, is to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s that easy, and it’s that hard. All we have to do is love our neighbors, but who are our neighbors, and can we really love them?

Sitting in the pews, we can love those across the aisles. OK, we can love most of the people across the aisles, there are certain ones that really irritate us. Then there are the ones who sit in the pews down the street. You know, the Baptists, the Catholics, those liberal Presbyterians. Not easy to love any of them with some of their crazy ideas and ways of worshipping. Then there are the Muslims, the Hindus, the Jews. Jesus of course didn’t mean any of them, why on earth would we love them?

But He did. He meant all of those people, and He also meant the menagerie of ethnic groups in our world, He meant homosexuals, He meant all the different nationalities, He meant Republicans and Democrats, He meant everyone, He even meant Donald Trump. Everyone is our neighbor. OK, that’s not so easy, it’s way too hard to love all those people.

So, as Christians, we struggle with loving our neighbor as ourselves. Unfortunately, Jesus said a whole lot more, and maybe He just didn’t understand how the world was going to change and how hard any of this would be to live by. In Matthew 25:40, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”. He didn’t qualify it, He didn’t say, “make sure they are really the least of these brothers and sisters of mine”. We often get hung up on whether those begging in the streets are truly poor, and we get hung up on whether those on welfare are really deserving of welfare. We complain about helping those in need in foreign countries when there are so many in need in our own country. Why does it have to be either/or? Why can’t we help both? As many of us sit here fretting over having enough money in our 401(k) plans to retire comfortably, there are many who are wondering if they will have anywhere to sleep tonight, let alone sleep comfortably.

Unfortunately, as Christians, we also have that intense need inside of us to judge others. Jesus was pretty clear on this topic in at least a couple places. In Matthew 7:5, Jesus said, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”. And in John 8:7, Jesus said, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her”. We can’t judge one another? As hard as it is to admit, we all do it at one time or another, and unfortunately in many cases, so frequently. Some believe homosexuals don’t belong in church unless they stop their sinful ways. Some believe divorced people don’t belong. Many believe and say Catholics are not going to Heaven, they are not really Christians. Those are but a few examples of how we judge one another. Many of us believe we have a secret insight, maybe kind of like Santa Claus’ list of “who is naughty or nice”, and we can determine who gets into Heaven and who doesn’t. I’m not quite sure how any of us have a right to judge what the criteria is for getting into Heaven, and if it rests on whether you sin or not, I’m pretty confident we all lose.

In Matthew 16:24-26, Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life, will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” Can you just imagine some of the conversations modern-day Christians would have with Jesus? “Jesus, I know you came down to this earth, you were beaten, tortured, humiliated, crucified all for my sins, but you know, sometimes people make fun of me for being a Christian. And sometimes people don’t like it when I say Merry Christmas, and they aren’t Christian. Those things can really hurt my feelings. You just don’t understand how hard it can be sometimes.”

I think Christianity has lost its way, at least in the US. We have this distorted view that the United States is a Christian nation, even though our Founding Fathers founded this nation based on religious freedom. We want to legislate Christianity, we want to make it a part of how we govern the nation and a prerequisite for those running our country. We even want to make it a prerequisite for getting into this country. Religion has no place in politics, just as politics has no place in religion. Just as I wouldn’t want the Koran to be displayed on the Courthouse lawn, I also don’t want the 10 Commandments displayed on the Courthouse lawn. There should be a clear separation of church and state, and when those two paths cross, it is typically when someone wants to persecute or discriminate against someone in the name of God.

It’s much too easy for us to be Christians in the US, our lives are so good. How could we not be thankful when we have everything? We have become spoiled, we want everything, and we have forgotten what Christianity is all about. We believe that prosperity and Christianity go hand in hand. If we worship, if we praise God, God will bless us with abundance. We will get all of the toys, the stuff, the good grades that we need to make us happy. “God is good, I got what I wanted for Christmas!”

Have you ever gone to a foreign country where there is poverty beyond anything you can imagine? What amazed me was the level of faith and worship that some of those people showed. They had nothing, they lived in squalor, but they would get dressed up, walk for miles, and spend hours worshipping God. They had nothing worldly to be thankful for, but they worshipped God with thanksgiving and gladness and with all of their hearts.

That is a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. People who have nothing, have nothing really to be thankful for other than the lives they have been given, devoutly worshipping and praising God. There are people around the world, who risk their lives to worship Jesus Christ, they are devoted followers of Jesus Christ. There are missionaries who put themselves at risk on a daily basis, who put their mission above personal gain or their own well-being. There are people in our own communities who put their own lives aside to help those less fortunate and who are in need. Being a devoted follower of Jesus Christ is serious business, it means “denying yourself, taking up the cross and following Jesus”. It’s not the cafeteria style Christianity we have morphed into.

So am I a devoted follower of Jesus Christ? Hardly, I sadly fall into the definition of a classic Christian. I guess the title of my blog should have been “Why I Wish I Weren’t a Christian”. I could give you so many examples of where I fail miserably, where I fit all of the descriptions I elaborated above. What bothers me so much is that we used to be, and we should be, so much better than this. We used to care about others, those less fortunate, but we’ve become so jaded, so concerned for our own well-being. I still don’t plan to give up. As I grow older, the visions of the homeless, the poor, the less fortunate, pain me more and more. I still do so little, but I can’t give up. In closing, there is one more Bible verse that continues to run through my head, and it’s one that has been etched into my memories for many, many years. It is Micah 6:8 and it says:

And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

So simple, and yet, so hard.