A New Word for Christian?
One of my favorite writers, John Fischer, once asked: “Do you ever wish we had a new word for “Christian?” I bet there are a lot of people out there who would be Christians if they didn’t have to become a “Christian” to be one.
To me, John Fischer is a guy who “gets it.” A man of faith whose faith deals with the real stuff of life, not the stuff of political activists or irrelevant evangelists or poor communicators with big plans and no skills at getting them across. He’s a guy who is able to say the important things about why people dislike so much people who believe what I believe. And he’s right most every time, I’ve come to believe.
People don’t like us because by and large…
We’re fake.
We’re hypocritical.
We’re judgmental.
We’re known more by what we stand against than what we stand for.
We’re loud and opinionated.
We dress funny. (Well, at least on those horrible TV networks.)
We fit in the real world like a black and white TV with rabbit ears fits with a new Game Cube.
We throw around language that doesn’t mean anything to people.
We think we’re better than others.
We think we’re right. All the time.
We’re unfriendly.
We’re a clique.
We play at being pious.
We don’t feel comfortable associating with non-religous people.
We ask people to change who they are before we’ll accept them.
We want converts, not friends.
We are terribly condescending.
We like ideals better than people.
We focus on rules more than living.
We can’t even get along among ourselves.
And most of the time we end up disproving what we say we believe more than proving it.
It’s a painful list to make. And I could go on.
But there’s another side. I’ve seen the soft underbelly of my faith that doesn’t get shown on the news. I’ve seen the man with AIDS who shook my hand and hugged me and said thank you. And I asked him, “For what?” because it didn’t seem right for a man to have to thank me for being human to him. I’ve seen more “Mother Teresa’s” at work in storefront centers, helping kids graduate high school and helping people learn job skills to get a better job than fast food. I’ve seen people I know give their last few dollars of their monthly budget just because someone had a need.
Read more:
http://filthyragsanddirtycups.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-new-word-for-christian.html
