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abortion, Casting Crowns, Christian, Church, Contraception, emergent, HHS Mandate, Institute on Religion and Democracy, IRD Blog, Luke Moon, same sex marriage
Back in the day, when I was less faithful and a lot more concerned about what people thought about me, I used to proudly declare, “Christians should be known for what we are for rather than what we are against.” My fellow “backslider” and non-Christian friends would nod in agreement. It sounds so simple right? Surely no one will turn that against us. If we just say nice, non-controversial things, people will be nice to us. Sadly, reality is profoundly different than my youthful naiveté. I might be able to shrug it off if I did not hear the statement so often these days. I often hear it from Emergent Church leaders or those on the Evangelical Left who would prefer the faithful Church was more accommodating on issues of sexuality and salvation. Yet in most cases the use of this phrase can be chalked up to ignorance and a misunderstanding about the nature of public discourse.
Take for example the recent song Jesus, Friend of Sinners by the band Casting Crowns.
Jesus friend of sinners the one who’s writing in the sand Make the righteous turn away and the stones fall from their hands Help us to remember we are all the least of thieves. Let the memory of Your mercy bring your people to their knees.
Nobody knows what we’re for only what we’re against when we
judge the wounded.
What if we put down our signs crossed over the lines and love like
You did
Oh Jesus friend of sinners.
Many of us could say, “Yes and amen” to the first part of the verse, but the second stanza makes the ignorant comment. It’s ignorant because on important matters of public policy–those matters Christians are known to have strong opinions about–we often talk about what they are for. But talking about what we are for does not matter if our words are twisted around. Here are three recent and prominent policy issues that illustrate my point.
Several months ago, the people of North Carolina had the opportunity to go to the polls to vote for an amendment to the state constitution. The amendment states, “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.” As it turns out 61% of the voters in North Carolina voted for this amendment. Nowhere does the amendment say it is anti-gay marriage. However, in the media Amendment 1 became known as the anti-gay marriage law where in reality it was the pro-marriage between one man and one woman law.
Over the last forty years, defenders of the pre-born have made a valiant effort to hold onto the term pro-life. In spite of recent efforts by the EPA and the environmental lobby to steal the phrase so that even abortion advocates qualify as pro-life, the term is understood as being for protecting the life of pre-born babies. As with the marriage issue, faithful Christians are not socially recognized for being “pro” anything, but rather we are labeled as anti-abortion, anti-woman, anti-choice. A simple comparison on major news networks, including Fox News, show journalist preferring anti-abortion over pro-life.
Finally, the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate which as of August 1, 2012 requires all insurance companies provide free sterilization services and contraception, in the form of birth control pills and prescriptions that cause abortions. As expected, Catholic and Protestant universities and hospitals objected to being required to cover services that go against their moral teachings of their faith. These proud institutions were accused of starting a “War on Women” rather than simply asking that they be allowed to qualify under the religious exemption. In being for religious liberty one becomes labeled anti-woman.
The real issue is that word matter and labels are fundamentally part of the discourse on social policy (culture war) issues. Label are not in and of themselves evil, but play an important role in helping us process information. If you want to do an experiment on trying to live without labels, start by taking the labels off the cans in your cupboard. Christians are constantly being labeled as anti-gay, anti-women, anti-science, anti-environment, etc. While there are numerous examples of Christians saying hurtful and mean things, the vast majority of Christians are for human flourishing and living to the high standard that God has set for us.
By joining the chorus of voices that say, “Christians should be known by what we are for, rather than what we are against,” we ignorantly affirm the negative view of Christians rather than confronting the misapplied label. As our culture drifts from its Christian mooring, we should anticipate the rhetoric and false labeling to increase. Ultimately, we should not expect the world to speak well of us, Jesus told us they won’t, but we can choose how we speak about ourselves.
AMEN AMEN AMEN!
Well written navel-gazing.
. I hear you, saying that for you – being nice was backsliding. But I do hope, that you still see kindness, being kind, as a fruit of the Holy Spirit so when you ‘confront the misapplied label’, to an audience that thinks other than yourself, He will be present – not just your confrontation alone.
Our noisy, obnoxious “stands for truth” are NOT furthering the cause of Christ as too many assume. Instead, they are hardening the hearts of multitudes of individual people Jesus died to save.
If God’s priority was judgement, then none of us would be here and Christ would never have died. But love is God’s priority and that’s why Jesus came, taught, healed, died and was resurrected – the way He did it allowed Him so satisfy justice while maintaining His priority of loving His creation.
Jesus DID NOT sacrifice Himself so that all the world’s moral wrongs would be fixed and everyone would think orthodox thoughts.
Jesus DID sacrifice himself so that imperfect people such as ourselves could be reconciled to God.
Once the reconciliation happens THEN His Spirit will work in His newly adopted child to make whatever changes need to be made that are appropriate to that individual, in the manner and on the schedule that *GOD* determines.
We make a grave mistake when we substitute our “holiness” for the Gospel. We should be pointing people to Jesus, not rubbing their noses in their sin (real, imagined or assumed).
God is big enough to convict people without our help. Each of us have enough problem with our own sin, and should be learning to cooperate with His Spirit in our own lives, rather than pointing fingers at others. It is part of our growth in Him to become secure enough in our faith to trust Him to do things like this without our having to “do it for Him.”
If “standing for the truth” is obnoxious then all of the writers of the Bible should be called obnoxious. They were, of course, called worse than obnoxious and often forsake their lives in their stand for the truth. The writers of the bible call people to be reconciled to God and then once they are reconciled, they live according to his Word. In the New Testament this takes the form of salvation leading to repentance and sanctification.
The process of sanctification, where the reconciled become more like the one who reconciles us, means that we move into greater levels of holiness. Holiness is the substitute for the gospel, but evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in our lives.
The love of God is not the eros (erotic) love that permiates our society, but the love of a father towards his children. We who have accepted God as our Heavenly Father have chosen to submit to his law (the rules of his house) because he knows what is best for us. The author of Hebrews writes that God disciplines those he loves. So we can see in God’s love, the wooing to be with him, the call to holiness, the call to flourish, and the discipline.
Brett, you seem to apply sin to a very individual level as if the sin of the individual has no impact on the community. In the Old Testament, sin of individuals ruetinely impacted the community. The failure to succeed in taking Ai, was due to the sin of Aiken. This continues into the NT where Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for permitting and affirming sexual immorality. The church is a community of believers that are called to holiness as individuals and corporately.
Luke, there is a balance to be struck here.
It is clear to me that Evangelical Christians are in territory that makes them detrimental to the cause of Christ. The “culture war” has done nothing positive and great deal that is negative.
Our lives lived for Christ are our greatest witness to others, followed closely by our gentle, loving, edifying speech. The Evangelical part of the Church generally fails miserably on ALL these points. It’s so easy to rail about sin (real, imagined or assumed), but it’s quite difficult to invest ourselves in the lives of others. We *are* taught to help others get past their sins, but to do so with great humility and awareness of our own vulnerability. We are also directed to work on our own sin FIRST.
I stand by my remarks, and it will be clear what our Lord thinks about this at the Bema…
…Until that time, I would rather err on the side of love than on the side of judgement – it is a position and attitude that I firmly believe His Spirit has led me to.
Abandon yourself to God (who has your back), and when in doubt, do the kind thing.
Being constantly misunderstood–not just by the secular world but by theo-liberals as well–could count as a form of persecution. It’s not exactly martrydom, but being misconstrued is a burden we bear. Recently I posted on Amazon a book review in which I mentioned that evangelical churches grow while liberal ones tend to shrink. Someone commented that my review was “saturated with capitalism”–and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. No matter how much we may accentuate the positive–pro-life, pro-marriage, etc.–our message falls on polluted ears.