people and purpose: 10 things they hate about you
Pastor Aaron shares some statistics that show what younger generations think of Christianity, and how this perception is a far cry from the historical witness of the church. Note: Many of these statistics come from this relatively new book.
cool Aaron, i didn’t get to see this part of your sermon when you preached it a couple of weeks ago so i am glad i got to see/hear it here. Your sermons are always wonderfully spoken and challenging, hope to hear more in the future!
how do you turn the conversation around with some who might view these stats as indicative of the already hostile views of non-Christians? In other words, what happens when a well meaning Christian sees this and says, “Well, these kids already hate Christianity, so therefore they’re going to see the negatives of it?”
What I mean is, I think it is easy for a group of people who are being told a hard truth to turn the truth around and point the blame at the accusers; especially if the group, or individual in the group, thinks they are doing good work already.
And conversely, how do we change the way we act to portray God’s glory in our daily lives instead of portraying hard, stone-hearted judgmental hearts? Are there prescriptive steps? Or is it all relative to the person seeking after God’s heart? Is it both?
Questions open to the general public, by the way, not just Aaron :)
I can’t resist noting that the statistics from UnChristian come with some pretty harsh anecdotal responses from the surveys that indicate more than just disagreements with doctrine, but I think you’re right to remind us that the Christian worldview will always be offensive to many.
Your questions deserve dialog though, so I’ll be quiet now.
well, to clarify my first point, I’m asking how to dialog with other Christians whose knee-jerk reaction is to feel that negative reactions to Christianity are due inherently to biases against Christianity.
For example, I think in the Mahler piece, Christianity is inherently offensive to him, despite the idiot things he’s heard people say that espouse Christianity; those things just give him ammunition.
But the poll results come with, as you said, “harsh anecdotal responses from the surveys that indicate more than just disagreements with doctrine.” So I’m not saying that their responses should be discredited, I’m asking how to counter those that might argue that they *should* be discounted.
I would use Luke 19:6-10:
“So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
It is our responsibility as Christians to care what these people think. We can’t just discount it as “inherent bias.” Jesus has commissioned us to take the Gospel to all (Matt 29:19-20). We really need to take a hard look in the mirror and say “am I Zaccheus? or I am the grumbling crowd?”
Great response, David. Matt, let me try to combine this and a few other questions in a future post. I think it merits further discussion.
I posted this on another update, but I think it applies even better here, so I’ll add it to this discussion.
An anecdote, a group did a presentation on religious discrimination in my graduate diversity course at SPU. They had us fill out an anonymous survey to list things like, if a member of “x” group were to be elected, which group would be most opposed to your beliefs about America. The “x” could be a whole list from homosexuals, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Atheists, and Conservative Christians. In my class, at a private, blatantly Christian school, over 60 percent of the class voted for some form of conservative Christianity as being opposed to their beliefs. That is saying something terrible to me about the image we portray to the secular world. I think this ties in hugely with what you, David, are saying about how the “religious right” is trying to “legislate Christian moral values on America.”
And I think that because of that separation between moral and secular or “Christian” and “immoral,” the culture sees Christians now as the grumblers and not as Zaccheus. And I think without a doubt, we see a lot of people who are not Christian, and blatantly anti-Christian, showing more love and grace in our communities than the Christians. Now I’m just echoing Aaron’s sermon :)