I recently caught up with an old friend on Facebook. After the initial flurry of messages back & forth, our new "relationship" quickly devolved into just the occasional passionate adversarial comment on each others political posts. It became apparent that we strongly disagreed on political strategy. Eventually, our discussions fizzled out entirely, because I repeatedly supported my comments in opposition to her views by pointing out that what she was in favor of seemed to be incongruous with a Christian world view. We're both Christians, so I assumed we had at least a common foundational thread.
I argued this point a few times, until finally she cried,
"Why do you always have to drag religion into it?!"
Man, I was caught totally off-guard by that comment, but it sparked a very important line of thought: This person would be appalled if you used a cuss word in her presence. She'd lambaste you for supporting a womans right to choose to end a pregnancy. She has a fancy leatherbound bible. She is a longstanding and involved member of her church.
All this, and she is still totally OK with getting behind political ideals that are nothing at all like what Jesus worked so hard to teach us. I'm not trying to make a political point at all, what I'm saying is that we cannot call ourselves followers of Jesus and do the opposite of what he taught. He didn't teach about wearing nice clothes to church, or harp on the issue of sexual abstinence. He served. He got on his hands & knees and served. He worked with the poor until his strength gave out.
What my friend is doing is hypocritical, and she's not all alone. Across the country American Christians sit in our cushioned pews and tell our kids to shut up during church. then we carefully avoid sharing any part of our lives that isn't appropriate for church. If, God forbid, anyone would bring up some uncomfortable family issues, we nod sadly and tell them we'll pray for them, and then instead call our friends to gossip about them.
To Christians I say: shut up with your religious sounding speech and DO something. Until you take some kind of action that backs up what you're selling, you're doing little more than defiling the name of Christ.
To non-believers, I say: This is your evidence. Followers of Jesus are no better than anyone else. Sin is a universal disease, & I'll be the first to admit that I'm at least as prone to hypocrisy as everyone else, but don't write Jesus off for my crappy execution of his teachings. The birth of Jesus was an immeasurable gift, and there is so much more to him than dumb rituals and phony church faces.
