There is so much whining these days that it's hard not to hear it. Social media, that pair of words that get's thrown around far too much, is mostly responsible for this. Not only is Facebook an apparently readymade venue for our whining, it is also an echo chamber reverberating our complaints back to us through dozens or hundreds of others who share our view and biases. And because of the genius of this space - that there are computers and algorithms working constantly to make our echo chambers as efficient as possible - we wind up believing that our gripe is at the center of the information universe in some way. We see articles, comments, videos, memes and all of our friends reinforcing this sense of centrality through repetition of our viewpoint. This is not in any way coincidental; the social media machine is made to reinforce our self-centeredness.
What this means for Christians in particular is that we get really tribal. Maybe a story breaks about a Christian athlete who gets cut off mid-sentence while talking about Jesus. Or perhaps the media makes a big deal out of a fast food restaurateur who opposes gay marriage. Whatever occurs, the internet blows up in the face of Christians and suddenly it seems like the world is against us. Suddenly it's like we're not even supposed to be allowed to espouse views contrary to society at large. Suddenly it seems like we're not even widely accepted by our own culture. As if this wasn't a nation founded on Christian values and principles, like prayer in school, heterosexual marriage, and the gospel of health and wealth.
Interestingly this nation was not founded on those things, and if America is a Christian nation, those of us who bear the name of Christ should be pretty embarrassed. The thing is we Christians were so used to being the privileged and accepted class that we get our feelings hurt the moment the world dared remind us that we're not really welcome here. We Christians are so used to churches on every corner and Bibles in every hotel that as soon as the culture exposes itself to be not at all Christlike, we act like it's a surprise. But isn't this the same world which we are in but not of? Isn't this the same world which Jesus said would not accept us? Isn't this the very same fallen world that was given over to the Enemy when humankind screwed up, and which God himself came to redeem through Jesus, knowing good and well that it would still widely reject His love?
Hell yes it is! Did we think that just because we found a land where the government wouldn't harrass us that we had it made? Why did we ever get to a point where the Church was less the hands and feet of God and basically just a public institution? Why did we willingly trade Power in the Holy Spirit for the political power of man? And even though we look back on the reign of "Christian values" in the wider culture for so many decades, why are we lamenting the illusion that we were ever better off as the completely negligible mainstream practitioners of a mostly dead religion? My profound question is this: why did we ever think that we were off the hook for the hard life that Jesus promised we would have?
The truth is, we were promised hardship. We were promised persecution. We were promised a poor reception in the world if we came in the name of Jesus Christ. But you know what we believers have gotten in American for the last couple of centuries, especially the last 100 years? Not hardship, not in the name of Jesus. Not persecution, not really. And did we get a poor reception? I would say not, especially not since by and large it's still virtually impossible for a non-Christian to be elected president of this country.
So what does it mean if we were promised to be persecuted if we came in the name of Jesus and what really happened was we became the dominant cultural force in the nation? Well one conclusion is that we have not come in the name of Jesus Christ. That's my conclusion. We are not a Church that by and large moves in this society, in this world, with the good news of the Gospel of Jesus. That's why we don't know persecution. Do you think that if we lived and loved and moved and worshipped like Jesus did that we would be as comfortable as we are? Do you know anyone who has been martyred for their faith, the way Peter was? Do you know anyone who has been imprisoned for preaching the Gospel of Jesus like Paul was? Have you ever met anyone who could stir up the kind of hatred and vehemence among religious folks the way Jesus did? So much hatred that the most important religious figures of the day plotted to get him arrested and killed by the government?
I can tell you that I don't know many people that are persecuted for being Christians, but I know a lot of people who have gotten rich. If you travel to just about any major city in America you will find churches the size of universities. You will find churches with so many attendees on a Sunday morning that people are turned away at the doors and the local police direct traffic when the preaching is done. You'll find churches of such size and magnitude and income that the pastors have bodyguards and there are more programs for the congregants than there are outreach ministries for the poor, widows and orphans. In this great nation of ours you will find churches of such astounding wealth that you would probably be shocked to learn how much poverty there is in the same city, perhaps even blocks away, perhaps even right next door.
Perhaps there is poverty even inside the doors.
That's what I think about the American Church, our national arm of the Body of Christ. I think that despite our wealth and attendance that we are a body beset with poverty. We have money but we don't have power. We can clean up after tornadoes but our prayers don't heal the sick or broken-hearted. We love to serve but we can't figure out how to love. We worship at the feet of the whore Ministry while the man Jesus beckons us for our attention. The American Church has come to embody so much division, exclusion, privilege, haughtiness, arrogance and willful ignorance that we have the nerve to be annoyed at people who have decided they want nothing to do with us. We are so blind to our state of affairs that we can't understand why people don't want to attend. If the internet is awash with our gripes and complaints about our failing significance, it's equally awash with tips and instructions for how lure back the "Dones" and the "Millennials", as if the only thing we need to get people back into the pews is a more attractive offering.
My fellow believers, people aren't leaving the Church because they reject the Gospel of Jesus. They're leaving the Church because they're looking for God and they can't find Him there. We have spent the last few decades sanitizing the Gospel by making Jesus into Ghandi, outfitting him with soft robes and a sanguine disposition. We have consistently turned the church experience into a social regime where nobody is supposed to be uncomfortable and only the paid staff is supposed to do any spiritual work. My fellow believers, the Church in this nation is not being persecuted, the Church in America is becoming completely irrelevant, and that's why people are leaving.
If we want relevance and significance in this world then the only way to get there is through the Good News of Jesus Christ. But it's not enough for us to want the Church to be relevant within the context of society. What we need is to yearn for the healing and salvation of our fellow human beings. We have to be able to look into the eyes of anyone we encounter and earnestly desire to see what God sees. And what He sees is someone of inestimable value whom He loves; loves so much in fact that He turned the universe around for the very purpose of having a relationship with each one of us. This is the Gospel: that the God of all Creation loves us as sons and daughters. Do not seek to find validation in being rejected for a message of any less significance than this.
The time is come to stop whining. We are not moving heaven and earth by complaining about our irrelevance. Salvation is just as powerful and pertinent today as it was two thousand years ago, and don't believe for a second the lie of the Enemy that you need anything more than the simple good news of the man Jesus, the man who defeated Death and Sin. Believe that the Gospel is worth dying for, but more than that believe that it is worth truly Living for, and accept nothing less than the honest, full, complex, confusing, wonderful and life changing FREE Gospel of Jesus.
