Why they Hate us

A Facebook Friend posted this: 

I couldn’t resist responding: “Well, it seems that you too are quite judgmental.” This response created a storm. One person responded in his defense:

•  He is not judgmental; he is just making an observation!

This is the way that the media usually responds when accused of conducting a war-against-Christians. At first, my friend refused to admit that he too was judgmental. However, I knew him to be a bold straight-shooter, and so I responded that I was disappointed in him, because he wouldn’t answer my question. Then he admitted:

• Daniel...I really don't give a shit whether you are disappointed in me or not. I hope that is clear. Was it my intention to demean church-goers? No...not in this post. This post was pretty clear...an observation… The most judgmental people I have met have been regular church goers. Now...I can certainly demean church goers, in a number of ways. But in this post, I was simply demeaning judgmental people who go to church.

My “friend” is a sharp and intelligent man, and so I was surprised at his incoherent response – denying but yet affirming that he had been judgmental. He later declared himself “a sworn enemy of the organized/patriarchal/religious system.” 

A “sworn enemy” generally has both closed mind and heart. The attacks against me became increasingly vicious, not only from my friend but also from others. This made me reassess what I had written and why the dialogue became what it did. “Why are we hated,” I asked myself. My “friend” thinks that we are judgmental. I have no doubt that he sincerely feels this way. But what makes him think us more judgmental (and condemning) than others? True Christians are forgiving and compassionate, aren’t we?

Jesus explained that since we belong to Him, we will be hated as He is hated:

• “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me.” (Mat. 10:21-22)

•     “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19)

As with Jesus, they will even put us to death, convinced that they are doing the right thing:

•  “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.” (John 16:1-2)

Progressives – the communists – exterminated Christians with the justification that we are regressive elements that need to be destroyed in order to create a better world. Did they really believe that? Perhaps! But what is at the core of such a distorted belief?

Jesus explained that He was hated because He revealed the truth about others (John 7:7).

The more I pointed out my friend’s inconsistencies, the more incensed he became. Why? Jesus explained:

•  This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (John 3:19-21)

Jesus is the light, and He is hated for this. We too are the light (2 Cor. 5:19-21), and so we are hated. I know that this sounds arrogant, but we must arm ourselves with this awareness so that we do not suffer self-castigation when confronted with hatred. It goes with the turf, as Paul had warned:

• In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Tim 3:12-13)

If we refuse to embrace this uncomfortable truth, the deception of this world will embrace us. It will then become even more difficult to live the Christian life. We will retreat and blame ourselves and the church that we had been overly judgmental.

Also, if we shy away from the Bible’s teachings about the depth of sin and spiritual darkness, we will fail to understand what we are confronting and blame ourselves instead. Meanwhile, Paul warned:

• For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. (2 Cor. 2:14-15)

We are a stench to those who have rejected the light, but our experience gives us a different message. It insists that our colleagues are really good people, even truth-seekers. We, therefore, are prone to see things from their point of view and accept their disdain for the church.

Meanwhile, Jewish writers inform us that the Pharisees had been the most respected class of people in Israel, and it seems that they were, but this was only show. It was a show that Jesus exposed:

•   “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full… And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.” (Mat. 6:1-2, 5)

What looks good to us is hypocrisy to our Lord. Instead, the best of us are just like you – self-seeking at our core. We therefore need to be born-again and don’t forget that so do they!

My Facebook Friend – he’s kind-of a guru - hates me. I too have become his sworn enemy. However, knowing the root of his hatred, I don’t take it personally and therefore just want the best for him.

Inclusiveness, Brian McLaren, the Emergent Church and Hypocrisy

 When I go shopping, I go with a shopping-list. It enables me to do the shopping quickly without thinking about every item I see in the store. When we go shopping for a religion, we also have a shopping-list. On most modern religion-shopping-lists is the requirement that religion unites people and not divides them. It must embrace all worldviews, lifestyles and orientations. It must affirm everyone and not cause anyone to feel marginalized, judged, or degraded. It must provide a safe and nurturing place. In short, true religion must be inclusive and not exclusive.

This is the religion on the shopping-list of Emergent Church guru, Brian D. McLaren. He argues that Christianity is characterized by "hostility to the other”:

• Christians have been taught to see in "us vs. them" terms for centuries, and it will take time to reorient faithful people in a new direction -- "us with them," working for the common good. (Huffington Post Religion Blog, 2/19/03)

I’m not against “working for the common good.” My wife and I do this all the time, even though we continue to disagree about certain things. Differences need not equate with “hostility.” If they do, then McLaren and his Emergent Church must lead the hostility list.

In support of his indictment, McLaren cites two students:

• “People don't want to have to side with the church and against their friends who are Buddhist or Muslim or Jewish or agnostic."

• “We can't find a church that doesn't load a bunch of extra baggage on us. We tried, but they all had this long list of people we had to be against. It's just not worth it."

However, now they are against the Christian church! McLaren argues for a new Christian identity – one that is defined by what is positive and not by what is negative. At first, this sounds wonderful – an item that should be included on every religion-shopping-list. However, it seems as if McLaren fails to see that he too is negative and critical.

In fact, to be in favor of something means that we must also be against its negation. To be in favor of justice means that we are also against injustice. To be in favor of truth means that we must oppose what is not true. To love the truth means to hate the lie. I don’t think that there can be any way around this conclusion. Nor did Jesus!

Meanwhile, I can sympathize with students who are reluctant to stand “against their friends” who are of a different persuasion. I certainly wouldn’t! However, if I really care about them, I would have to ask myself, “What is the most important thing that I can give them?”

If a friend tells me that he intends to join the Klu Klux Klan, what should I tell him? – “Well, you’ve got to do what feels right for you!” No! Instead, I must somehow tell my friend that everything that seems right might not be right. There are certain things that are right and certain things that are not. I must become critical and negative. Okay, I can merely talk about the positive things that he has in Christ. However, he might agree and insist that he can also join the Klan. At that point, I am left with little recourse but to show him how the Klan and Jesus cannot be combined. I must become critical!

No one can be completely inclusive. One church in my neighborhood flies a banner reading something like this: “An Inclusive, Loving and non-Judgmental Community.” However, from their pulpit, they pleaded for volunteer teachers for their education program, from 4^th grade all the way through adult ed. I therefore emailed the pastor and the education director as instructed:

• I will gladly teach any class or grade. However, I need to be transparent about the fact that I am Christian (this is a Unitarian church) and this would influence my teaching. However, I am willing to be amenable to your oversight and feedback.

The education director responded with a flat-out “No!” There was not a hint of, “Well, let’s sit down and talk.” I then wrote to the pastor to point out the gross discrepancy between the message on their banner and the message I had received. No response!

I don’t blame this church for not being entirely inclusive. No church is nor can be. However, I do blame this church and McLaren for their hypocrisy. While claiming to be all inclusive, they are not! There are many who are excluded from such “communities,” but they are not honest about this fact. Meanwhile, they flaunt their inclusiveness while they bash those non-inclusive, judgmental evangelicals.

McLaren does his share of bashing:

• Religious communities often take a short-cut to building a strong group identity -- by defining themselves in opposition to others. Muslims, atheists and gays are high-profile "others" which can be scapegoated to build a strong "Christian" identity.

Admittedly, we all have the sinful tendency to bond at the expense of others. However, some struggle against this sin of “scapegoating,” and some don’t. Evidently, even as McLaren issues his indictments, he regards himself far above this struggle.

We need to have our shopping-lists, but we need to re-check them every so often to see if they contain items that are truly rational and even needful.

What it’s like to be a Counter-Cultural Christian

I asked the friendly woman next to me what she liked about this Presbyterian Church (PCUSA). She forthrightly explained that this church was more friendly and inviting than her prior church. It felt more like family. Indeed, the first two precepts of “Mission Statement” affirmed the very thing that she was experiencing:

• Acting as a beacon of love and hope to others;

• Providing spiritual and emotional nurture in an environment of acceptance for all people.

Essentially, this was their “statement of faith” – nothing about the essence of God, sin, humankind, or salvation, just love, compassion and justice.

Claire (not her real name) had been going to a Bible-centered church, but she found it to big, impersonal, and unresponsive to her as a person:

“I wanted to volunteer for one of their ministries, but there were so many obstacles. I had to take a lengthy training course and…”

I grieved within, knowing that her experience was reflective of many Bible (God)-centered churches. They generally do not have the flexibility to be fully people-centered. Their “statements of faith” contain many Biblical specifications regarding what people must believe, in order to serve. Essentially, they have to reflect the doctrine of their church, and understandably so.

Many of us are so deeply pierced by this national tragedy - We have lost all of our older colleges to secularism – all of the Ivy League schools. Many, which remain, are deeply compromised. We have seen our mainline churches depart as quickly as the freshness of springtime, taking with them all of the stately properties, engineered by the Biblical faith. This ubiquitous usurpation has left many churches scrambling to rent storefronts or space at the public schools, from which they are now also being ejected.

Perhaps our concern to preserve Biblical orthodoxy leaves us less wiggle-room to be responsive to people’s feelings than Claire’s church, which was clearly reveling in inclusive hugs. They even seemed confident that they were embracing the light. In fact, almost the entire surrounding culture reassured them that they were walking in the light. Indeed, people-centered churches are able to go-with-the-flow of feelings, proclivities, and the prevailing culture. They are free to tap into the popular sentiments of the age.

Claire confided, “It just feels right being here. Inclusiveness seems to be the answer.” She seemed to be such a warm, caring and sincere person. It therefore hurt me to question her sense of “rightness.”

“Sometimes what feels right to us may just be the effect of our cultural conditioning. After all, in many cultures, even the mention of homosexuality conjures up negative feelings.” I tried to say this as sensitively as I could, but I knew that I was fighting against a cultural tsunami, and I wouldn’t score any points, at least, not enough.

“I think that people can be too judgmental,” she gently responded. I assured her that this was true, but that this church was also judgmental. Before the sermon, a woman announced the meeting of a group devoted to combating “homophobia.”

“This church would judge me as ‘homophobic’ and shun me. Everyone judges; everyone draws a line somewhere! No group can be inclusive of every lifestyle. In regards to the gay lifestyle, there are great, statistically-established costs involved. I therefore think that love would require us to warn and not indulge.” Perhaps I should have just called homosexuality “sin,” but I was afraid that such a judgment would readily put me out-of-step with cultural norms, and allow others to prematurely dismiss me.

I was fighting a loosing battle. I cast my prayer-bottle upon the waters, but the tsunami drove it back in my face. I recalled the lament of the Prophet Jeremiah:

• Concerning the [false] prophets: My heart is broken within me; all my bones tremble… The land is full of adulterers; because of the curse the land lies parched and the pastures in the desert are withered. The prophets follow an evil course and use their power unjustly. (Jeremiah 23:9-10)

This is followed by the Lord’s own lament:

• This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, 'The Lord says: You will have peace.' And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, 'No harm will come to you.'” (Jeremiah 23:16-17)

The false prophet could always out-compete the genuine prophet. He was free from theological constraint to market his message solely according to the appetites of his consumers. They wanted to be assured that they would continue to enjoy peace and prosperity despite their lifestyles, and this was the very assurances that the false prophet would serve them. However, he had left the Lord out of his equation:

• But which of them has stood in the council of the Lord to see or to hear his word?      Who has listened and heard his word? See, the storm of the Lord will burst out in wrath…I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds. (Jer. 23:18-22

The false message is temporarily comforting, but it fails to bring the necessary healing. It doesn’t turn people from their evil. In contrast, love is far-sighted. It looks beyond the immediate comforts and desires to the coming tragedy and warns.

The true prophet almost always presented an uncomfortable message – one that wouldn’t feel right. The prophet would put his finger on sin - something which had to be confessed. It was confession and repentance that would bring about their reconciliation with the Source of Life.

Claire conceded that this probably wasn’t the church for me. “You have to find the church that feels right for you.” She said this in such a concerned way, that I didn’t want to dispute her assessment, but I knew that I had to.

“Claire, it’s not so much a matter of what feels right for me, but what is right before our God.” I felt her pain and cringed inside at my own words. I knew how she would receive these words – that I didn’t think that she was primarily concerned about God and truth. I had probably alienated her and failed at being people-centered, that is, Claire-centered. Perhaps, I was beginning to understand the lot of the Hebrew Prophets.