DENIGRATING CHRISTIANITY: AN ANCIENT PREOCCUPATION

As a Christ-follower for 43 years, I have many disagreements with various churches. However, in “Rescuing Jesus from American Evangelicals,” JohnPavlovitz.com made a series of vague charges against evangelicals, which I find unrecognizable:

• American Evangelical Christianity in all its bloated, greedy ambition—is the temple table that needs to be overturned and these political bed-making preachers are the Pharisees Jesus called to repentance. And these days, the Evangelical Church here in this country, in all its supremacy and bigotry and bullying—needs to be reminded where it came from.

If you believe in constructive criticism, you will be entirely disappointed with Pavlovitz’ frontal attack. He cites no concrete behaviors that need correcting. Merely calling evangelicals “Pharisees” does not identify any evangelical crime apart from exercising their vote in a way that disgusts Pavlovitz.

Merely accusing evangelicals of being hypocrites in failing to be like Jesus doesn’t help us to see their error. How are they not like Jesus? Pavlovitz accuses evangelicals of failing to be the Christ-centered community, which resembles the Early Church:

• it became exactly what it was designed to be: an interdependent community that resembled Jesus. It was the visibly different people who tangibly altered the places they traveled in life-giving ways.

However, this is the very thing that evangelicals have long strived to be despite their continuing to fall short of Christ’s glorious example. However, we continue to repent and to pick ourselves up according to the light of Scripture and of the Spirit.

How have we rejected the example and the Word of our Savior? We have often failed to be the light in the socio-political arena. Wanting to remain apart from politics, we failed to speak up strenuously against the Hitlers and the Jim Crow laws, bringing condemnation upon ourselves. However, Pavlovitz and others claim that we are un-Christ-like when we do speak up against such travesties as abortion and the objectification of women. It is noteworthy that these same critics will bring their indictments against evangelicals when we fail to speak out against these same social evils.

How then should we regard their indictments? I tend to see them as techniques designed to shame, silence, and to divide. We are demeaned as racists, sexists, and bigots. The fact that Christianity did more to elevate civilization than has any other religion is routinely dismissed in favor of the isolated instances where Christianity has fallen short. However, they turn a blind eye to Marxist socialism, which has murdered 100 million in a few short decades in order to impose their utopian state.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Besides, the hatred of Christ is just one of many proofs of Christ. He explained that if He was hated and persecuted, so too His Church:

·       “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” (John 15:18-20)