Apr 12, 2006

A new friend recently left a comment on one of my prior posts. As I normally do, I headed over to her blog to get a sense of who she is, etc and I was stopped in my tracks by the first post that I read.

Sharlet was ruminating about an old friend that she had lost touch with, who has now come back in her life espousing a new-found Christian faith. The friend seemed to be practically begging her to come to an Easter service, or more likely a Passion Play outlining the life of Christ. Sharlet found it strange and dismaying, and I daresay even a bit insincere, given that this friend declined to meet with her a different day, saying that she was simply busy.

While I find the actions of her friend nearly criminal given what her probable intent was, I think that this is an all to common occurrence. I believe that, of late, the Christian Church is focusing too much on evangelism, and not enough on discipleship. We have too broad a focus on saving EVERYONE, without ever seeming to really CARE for anyone. I don’t blame Sharlet’s friend – most likely she is simply doing as she seen others do – but I do blame our modern church culture.

Sharlet’s friend cares about her, and doesn’t want to see her miss out on salvation – yet she doesn’t seem to care enough to reintegrate herself into Sharlet’s life, love her for who she currently is, or to be there for her on a regular basis by being a consistent example of the transforming power of God’s love. Indeed, so far Sharlet has only seen what appear to be NEGATIVE aspects of the transforming power of God’s love.

Is that the message that her friend meant to convey? I highly doubt it – but our church culture doesn’t focus on this, it focuses on numbers, which I think is sad and borderline idolatry.

Anyway, I did feel compelled to respond to her post, and to the comments made by several of her readers, in an attempt to explain why her friend seems to have gone crazy. Please, let me know how I did…

My response:

So, I’m going to be the odd person out here, as I’m a Christian, and I’d like to comment on not only your post Sharlet, but also some of the comments of your readers… I want to apologize up front to anyone that I may offend with my words, please know that it is certainly not my intent or even my desire.

Sharlet, I’m glad that you mentioned that your thought your friend did what she did because she cares – I think that is most likely true. However, I have also seen Christians do similar things, not out of love, but out of cultural pressure from their fellow Christians to evangelize. Unfortunately, it is a very common trait of people who have lost the “spirit” of the Biblical message to the over-religious tendencies that plague many modern Churches. Anyway, that’s a subject for a different time…

I’m not going to try to “convince” you to believe in Christ – while I would be thrilled if you did, I only want to take a shot at explaining why so many Christians seem to go nuts and turn into annoying gnats that buzz around your head and just won’t go way.

Imagine this – (and forgive me if you’ve heard this before) – you wake up one day to find out that there has been a terrorist attack on your town. Somehow, a biological weapon was exploded in the air over the town center, and EVERYONE has been infected with a deadly virus – your parents, your lover, your kids, the neighbors, everyone. But not you…

To add to this problem, a side effect of the virus is that no one knows that they’ve been infected. For some reason, you were spared. Now say that you happen to be an expert in biological warfare – you are able to quickly develop a remedy for the virus, and you are ready to go out and administer the antidote.

How would people react to you wanting to stick them with a needle, when they don’t think they are sick?

“What do you mean a terrorist attack? I haven’t heard anything about that… Its not on the news, and no one else seems to be sick either. Maybe its you! You are the one that needs help!”

In fact, along these lines, they will probably try to get away from you as quickly as they can… Even the people that know and love you may not trust you and may wonder if you need help.

The problem is that if you DON’T stick them with that needle, they are going to die. Can you, at least for a brief moment, suspend your disbelief enough to FEEL the calm panic that can start to rise in you? YOU aren’t infected – you’re OK, but everyone around you is going to die if you can’t somehow convince them to let you give them the antidote.

Well, as far fetched as that scenario may seem to you, this is very similar to what happens to a new Christian. We believe that God created humans and because of the introduction of sin, we were separated from him. God is perfection, and no imperfection can be with him. How then can we be reunited? God can either change his rules – which he doesn’t do, because he is constant – or the price for our sin can be paid. Because he loves us, he found a way to pay the price for all sin from now through eternity – he gave himself, in the form of Christ, as the payment. But, because he gave us with free will, he won’t pay our debt unless we ask. Asking presupposes a few things: 1) us acknowledging that their is a God, 2) that we are separated from him, 3) that we don’t WANT to be separated from him, 4) that there is a debt to be paid to end the separation and 5) that we can’t pay that debt ourselves.

Loose any one of those points, and a person telling you that God will pay your debt appears very much as you did trying to administer an antidote to someone who doesn’t know they are infected.

Now, you may be thinking – well, yes, but that sounds really stupid. In fact, it sounds as stupid as the terrorist story that I made up above.

OK – you can certainly have that opinion. But, for the sake of argument, is it really any more far fetched than anything else? Basically we are saying that there IS a supreme being, and because it created us, it actually has an interest in us. Like any parent, it cares about our actions, and about our eternal welfare.

Is this more far fetched than paganism, where many spirits guide or interfere with our lives? Is it more far fetched than believing in reincarnation, where you die and come back again and again like a big bottle stuck in a recycling nightmare? Is it more far fetched than thinking that there is NO higher power, and that we are completely a fluke of science – a random happenstance created by the exact right interaction of possibly thousands of different environmental factors?

I don’t think so. In fact, I have yet to find a single world view that did not require a strong FAITH in SOMETHING. And, at that point, it is hard to point to a single faith and say it is more outlandish than another. Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that because these world views are equally outlandish, that they are all true, or even all false. I’m just saying that they are equally “crazy” when you examine the real belief. As I think you know, I believe that only one is correct – that only one CAN be correct – why? Because they are mutually exclusive – if I’m right, then someone else is wrong, and vice-versa. The “this is MY truth” doesn’t hold up to even the smallest amount of scrutiny because 1+1 can’t be 2 AND 3 at the same time.

Again, I don’t say this to convince you that Christians are right, but rather to explain why things appear as they do. Our beliefs may seem weird to you, but honestly they are no more weird than your own.

What do you think? Is my explanation right? What do you think of her friend’s actions?

This topic dismays me, because I feel like most of the church is actually pushing away more people than it is attracting, and I know that was not God’s intent. AND, if that is true, it means that God isn’t even in the work that we are doing, which is more than just a sobering thought.