***This entry is in response to this entry on Mike and Kristen’s blog where Mike talks about non-Christians who like Jesus but hate Christians. I’m responding here so that I don’t take up lots of space in their comment section.***

Mike wrote the following:

This postmodern world is driving me mad. You can’t go anywhere near an evangelist (or anything of the sort) without hearing something along the lines of non-christians liking Jesus but hating Christians.

This drives me mad.

I imagine goats saying to each other: “Man, that’s one cool Shepherd, but his sheep stink.” “Yeah man, they suck. I don’t want to hang out with them.”

My response: “You know what?! You suck too!! Come and join up with the sheep who stink and suck. You fit in FINE!”

I hate to say this Mike but… it’s not totally a pomo theory — it’s something I heard frequently from my non-Christian friends in college. There were a lot of people who either saw some really catty behavior from people in church, had Christians get in their face for soul winning purposes, or saw examples of intolerance from people claiming to be Christian (example: the “people” from Westboro Baptist Church). It drives me mad because these people will say that the violent people who cause mayhem at WTO protests don’t represent the protesters but… they refuse to make the connection that not all Christians are vicious, nasty, hateful, catty people.

My main group of friends in college was not overwhelmingly Christian and I spent my first year of college having to defend my faith to them. During my second year, someone actually made the comment “Jen, you’re not like other Christians — you’re nice.” It was hard to hear (since I knew that a lot of my Christian brothers and sisters were just as nice if not more so than I) but I was thankful that they knew they could be real with me about their frustrations. There were a lot of ministry opportunities that I got because people needed someone religious to talk to but didn’t want to be preached at about how evil and sinful they were. My friend Melissa was the same way and I think the Lord worked some good things through the two of us because we were willing to listen to people’s frustrations about how they had been treated.

This raises some interesting points about how we deal others. Firstly, our movements are scrutinized because we are Christian. There are people who are always looking to criticize us because they expect us to be nasty people; but there are also people who might be seeking and who are looking at us to see what Christians are like. I know that as a seeker, the example of my neighbor was a positive thing — she practiced what she preached and that really was an influential factor in my conversion. The people who got in my face about my lack of faith were really a deterrent — there is a huge difference between “speaking the truth in love” and being in my face so that my conversion will win you brownie points with God. (Ask me why I think “soul-winning” is a stupid practice.)

Secondly, we have to realize that as representatives of the faith, there is a fair amount of apologetic stuff that we have to do. Some people are smart enough to distinguish between true Christianity and the behavior of some of our most vocal members (Pat Robertson, for example *shivers*); but others aren’t, and we need to be aware of this. I frequently had to say stuff like “I’m sorry that ___________ traumatized you but that doesn’t mean that I’m like that” when people would tell me about really bad experiences they had in church, when people would conduct “soul winning” missions on them, or when people treated them badly at other times. It probably sounds stupid, but you need to validate people’s frustrations even if it’s not directed at you. If you don’t admit that they do have a right to be frustrated, you’re basically saying that the purported wrong was never committed. The key is getting them to move on from it and to see that not all Christians are nasty/in people’s faces/hateful and that the Bible does not condone such behavior.

Thirdly, we have to deal with the remainder of the problem which *is* postmodernism — I swear that I will cover the next person who tells me that “it’s all relative” with honey and tie them to a tree in Alaska, letting them deal with some grizzly bears. Mainline Christianity (my own denomination included) is guilty of this inasmuch as they preach a Gospel of inclusion. It’s kind of like they see the situation as black and white with one solution being to completely exclude people in sinful lifestyles while the other is to say that some things aren’t sin in order to get people into church. As Gerhard Forde has said, “[we] have failed to take sin seriously.” Yes, Jesus hung out with the sinners and tax-collectors but He also encouraged them to leave their lives of sin and be reconciled with God.

Getting back to the problem of pomo schtuff, a lot of people think that Jesus was just a really cool teacher. I mean, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims believe that Jesus existed — that doesn’t mean that they are saved because they don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God and died in atonement for their sins. Jesus *did* say some really cool things but we need to get people to understand that these were not just pearls of wisdom, but instead part of His salvific plan. Yes, there are some pretty hard teachings in the Bible; but they exist for a reason and we need to get people to work with those passages and struggle with them because understanding generally comes from that struggle.

Lastly, we need to keep in mind that we are how people are going to image Christ. I think it was Lewis Smedes who said that of 100 people “99 will read the Christian”. (Someone who has read What’s So Amazing About Grace, could you please let me know if it’s the right person and right quote?) Yes, this puts undo pressures on us and we shouldn’t be judging by outward appearances but… if we show that we have a power not of ourselves in our lives that helps us to treat people with dignity and survive the obstacles thrown in our path, we will truly preach Christ to a broken world that needs His healing.