I consider myself a very blessed man in a number of ways. This blog has become one of my great blessings. One of the reasons I love this blog community is the variety of people who interact on it. There has been an increase in the number of people who aren’t Christians who comment on various posts. I want to share with you the perspective of one young woman on how she views Christians. These comments come directly from her comments on some of my posts. They have not been changed.
On Being Selfish, Not Really Interested in Others
I remember a rather outspoken evangelical Christian young woman I worked with – I’d just moved to town, and we went to a movie together. Each week she invited me to her church, and I didn’t want to offend her by saying “No thanks.” As it was, I had Buddhist activities one Sunday and I was mentoring a young girl two other Sundays, but that theoretically left a Sunday open. We only worked together for 3 months, and it never worked out. I went to a different job.
She showed up there one night, and jumped right to the church invite. No “Hey, how’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in a while!” Nope – just “Do you want to come to church with me this weekend?” Since I was on to her game, I decided to play. I said, “Sure, I’ll go to church with you, because I’m interested in seeing what you’re interested in. That’s what friends do, after all. And I’m sure you’ll want to come with me to a Buddhist meeting to see what I’m interested in, right?”
“Oh no!” she replied. “I just love the Lord so much!”
“Well,” I said, “then there’s no point in me going to your church because I’m not interested in either becoming a Christian or joining your church.” I never saw her again.
That’s how far Christian friendship extends – I’ve seen it over and over and over. Christians look at everyone else as if they’ve got targets painted on their foreheads. Nobody likes being hunted down or treated like someone else’s project. We don’t need to drop all our beliefs just to accept yours, and we don’t need to become more like you just to be acceptable people, worthy of being regarded as people instead of targets. Love does not seek to create clones of itself. Selfishness does.
On Being Self-centered and Judgmental
Keep your religious beliefs to yourself. If I have any interest in what you believe, I’ll ask you. And if I don’t ask you, then go right ahead and assume that your “witnessing” will be unwelcome. I’m sure that you like whatever you believe very much, and I’m very happy that you like it. However, just as your favorite flavor of ice cream is not necessarily going to be mine, I wish you would assume that I’m just as content with my own beliefs (or lack thereof) as you are with yours. Why not ask me first what *I* believe? Why not show an interest in what’s interesting to me instead of expecting me to always be interested in what YOU’RE interested in? Christians are so selfish and self-centered! Tell me – when was the last time an atheist rang your doorbell to tell you about his worldview? The reason the world hates Christians is because they behave badly, they’re rude, boorish, arrogant, conceited, full of themselves, ignorant, and judgmental. Go ahead – accuse me of being judgmental now. Doesn’t matter – I don’t claim to follow a belief system that has actual rules AGAINST being judgmental, so it’s *fine* for me to be!
On Being Unwilling to Develop True Friendships with Non-Christians
As a mother of young children in a homeschooling environment, we found ourselves surrounded by Christians. Of course, the kids would become friends and we moms would chat while they played. Without a single exception, this “acquaintanceship” only progressed to the point that I had to make it clear that no, I would not acceptjesusasmypersonalsavior, and no, I would not be attending their church. Then the Christians never called again, and I was left to explain to my sad children why their new friends wouldn’t be playing with them any more.
When my son was just 6, the boys down the street told him he was not allowed to play with them because he wasn’t a Christian. I went down to see what was going on (because my 4-yr-old daughter was going to go down there and teach those boys a lesson!) and I confirmed that what my son had reported was indeed what they’d said. And the mother of one was right out in the front yard, 25 feet from me, pretending to be very focused on trimming some plants. She never said a word.
Finally, the 6-yr-old girl across the street told my kids, ages 7 and 9, that if they weren’t Christians, they would be going to hell. She certainly learned the “Good News”. And you Christians wonder why we non-Christians avoid you?? HINT: It’s not because we’re intimidated by your awesomeness and are just sitting here, pining for you, wishing you would like us. We already know you don’t.
Your Response?
Frankly, I found these comments painfully true for many of us. Though my first reaction was one of defensiveness, the more I read them, the more I realize that this women has identified many of us Christians too clearly.
What do you think? What is your response?
Posted on June 15, 2013
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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303 Comments
I found her concluding comment about being judgmental pretty funny! She thinks that it’s okay for her to be judgmental because she doesn’t “claim to follow a belief system that has actual rules AGAINST being judgmental”. However, because she is CONDEMNING someone for being judgmental, that indicates that SHE has a standard (a rule) against being judgmental. Hence, it is against HER OWN STANDARD to be judgmental and she cannot call her judgmental behavior “okay.” She is a hypocrite as much as any Christian. She is as judgmental as those she condemns. Funny.
Hmm… I think what we need here is to elucidate semantics. Firstly, I’d like t point out that it’s impossible to function without judgement, unless you aim to live the life of a barnacle. Actually, even barnacles offer some basic judgement – they discriminate between the presence and the absence of the tide, for example.
Everyone exercises some degree of judgement.
The particular species of judgement under scrutiny herein, though, is a special one. We mean something specific, and I’ll go out on a limb and exercise my own judgement by defining it; almost as though I were some higher life-form with a capacity for sublety and careful, culturally informed, discretion.
If I judge someone in the sense of the accusation levelled against the judgement of certain Christians, I am determining them to be a lesser human being for some sin of theirs that, objectively, in no way harms other people. The sin, for example, of atheism. The sin of being gay. The sin of belonging to some anathematic, schismatic sect or even a wholly different religion . The sin of failing to conform to your picture of how they should run their lives. The sin of being different.
An example of this kind of judgement is the propagandised manipulation of the wartime German populace into judging the entire population of Jews as inferior human beings. This sets the stage for more overt acts against your untermenschen du jour, exactly as it did in Nazi Germany. If you’d like some background, read The Pianist, by Wladislaw Szpilman; or The Diary of Anna Frank.
I have no problem whatsoever with judgement in the general sense.
Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church is an admittedly extreme example of this mentality. Even if I hated gays, I could not, under any circumstances, bring myself to picket funerals . I don’t have children, but I have enough empathy to have some tiny inkling of the enormous soul-wrenching that a parent feels when they lose a child, and to me, desecrating a funeral in this way seems monstrous.
I know that the majority of Christians are much, much better people than the variety caught in this particular spotlight.
Here’s a bright idea: STOP PRESSURING OTHERS TO JOIN YOUR RELIGION. If someone doesn’t want to join your church, that doesn’t make them a jerk. They’re entitled to their own beliefs, just like you’re entitled to yours. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but if you really want the rest of the world to accept you, then you need to accept the rest of the world. Stop focusing on how many souls you can save and start focusing on being a good person. And by ‘good person’, I mean being compassionate and generous, not paraphrasing a book written three thousand years ago on a street corner.
I don’t hate Christians, but because of the way I’ve been treated in the past, I’m wary of them. If you want to be respected, then do some respecting in return.
Since I am an atheist, as are my children, I don’t know what Christians say to each other about non-Christians, but I figured it out on my own. After my kids were treated just like in this story, by several Christian children, I googled on the issue. Well, viola! This has happened to my kids repeatedly with Christian children. They are the worst hypocrites, compared to the Muslims and the Jews. They are downright cruel to my kids the way they begin befriending and then drop them, and shun them.
I actually love the teachings of Jesus and think he was an amazing philosopher. It is a shame that I feel like I follow his teachings about treating other people with respect more than most Christians, especially the children among them. Jesus would be disgusted with most Christian children. Often the more devout parents of these children are very kind, they are just raising some very unkind, judgmental children.
I wish I didn’t live in the Bible belt. It is very difficult for my kids to be surrounded by so many hypocrites.
As a non-Christian, I have to say that 90% of these comments continue to back up the point from the article. Most of them talk about “waiting to develop a relationship before witnessing” or something of the sort. There are over 20 major religions in the world, nevermind the number of smaller subsets. Has it ever just occurred to Christians that we just don’t believe the same thing you do? That we don’t think you’re right? That we don’t, at any point, want your prayers or your opinions on how we should think? If Christians are going to be so narrow minded that they are only going to have relationships with people that think the same thing they do, or think that they are better than people that don’t agree with them, why would we want to have a relationship? If you can’t look past my religious preferences (or lack thereof) and see me as a PERSON, I’ll just hang out with my open minded, non preachy friends.
I have the same feelings as you do.
I do have spiritual belief, but it’s personal and sacred to me. It’s like intimate love making with my soul mate. It’s none of other people’s business. I won’t share it without being asked.
Christians are different. Yahweh permeates everything in their lives. Not talking about Yahweh is similar to denying him. This god is really a totalitarian dictator.
I wish that the US will segregate areas where Christians and non Christians do not live side by side. I think that’s the only way to achieve utopia for non Christians.
Here is something radical: How about quit the whole trying to “save” people thing. I know I do not need to be saved. I do not believe in hell, or the creation myth of the Bible being the only viable creation myth. If you dig it, cool. Leave others alone. Spirit, god, the universe, buddha, nature, Paramhansa Yogananada, Eddie Vedder, Michael Houser, Shannon Hoon, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Bob, Erich Fromm, Krishna, the stars, divine mother, Amma, kindess, love, philosophy, Freud, Che, Jung, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr, Ghandi and all of the other myriad of spiritual teachers have their own unique ways of finding folks when the time is right. just be human. quit trying to change others. they will never respect you for it, as it it colonization of the spirit.
I don’t believe it will ever happen. This apostle Paul is such a good manipulator that even Moses couldn’t compete with.
According to 613 commandments handed to Moses, once people offend Yahweh, they are punished and die. That’s it.
According to new revelation from Jesus to Paul, once people offend Yahweh, they will be resurrected to be punished over and over.
If anyone can believe this as compassionate law from god, they are no longer humans.
At the end of the day, what most non-Christians think about Christians in America is that we don’t love them. They know we love ourselves, and we love our beliefs, and we love our right to speak up about stuff we don’t like, and we we love our right to love Jesus, and talk about him and wear t-shirts and stickers about him. But they don’t know we love them. That is our own fault. We have become more known for defending our right to be followers of Christ than acting like followers of Christ.
Its true for many cases. We as Christians should not force anyone but leave it up to their choice. Its because we are afraid at some point that if we do not force or request anyone they may not be like us. Also many non-Christians finds Christianity a GOOD way of living life.
> Also many non-Christians finds Christianity a GOOD way of living life.
There are many aspects of the Christianity that I grew up with that seem highly praiseworthy – kindness to the ppor and sick; befriending the marginalised, valuing peace. Quakers, for example, represent these and other aspects very well, and as such I have a great deal of respect for this group and no small amount of affection. On the other hand, evangelicals seem strident, slavishly legalistic in the sense of the Pharisees, judgemental, *mystifiyingly* smug and often rather mean-spirited.
I make the point about smugness because I know for a fact that there are many people who are not Christian who value ethical behaviour and live their beliefs to a high standard of fidelity. I’ve spent a lot of time around scientists, for example and I’d say that the majority are in their respective fields because they see the advancement of knowledge as a valuable thing in its own right and they wish to improve the lot of the human race in whatever way they can contribute, large or small. They’re really not in it for the big bucks, or to pull the wool over the eyes of the stupid plebs. Look to the seamier elements in the population of lawyers, businessmen and politicians for those qualities.
Again, look at secular humanists, many of whom involve themselves with voluntary organisations because, again, they want to make the world a better place.
To listen to many evangelicals, though, you’d think these people were scum – just acheing to deceive the good members of the flock and score points for Satan and his minions.*
I am a secular humanist. I don’t have a religious bone in my body – my mind just doesn’t work that way. At the same time, I have ideals and an ethical framework that revolves around a central concept – harm no one. I don’t need the threat of eternal punishment to convince me not to murder, lie or steal. Surpisingly, I am far from unusual.
* Disclaimer – I am not affiliated with Satan or his minions, although I do wear a lot of black and have occasionally attended rock concerts.
Should we be blunt to those we meet as to our love for the Lord, or should we befriend them first? . . .take our time and ease into it? Hmmm . . let’s see, . . will that non-believer be alive the next day or even 10 minutes after we meet them?? Is the Lord placing you in their path for a reason? Have you been placed to plant a seed, . . . water it , . . . or reap the harvest? Our Bible says that “Now is the time for Salvation”. I always try to turn a conversation to a spiritual side within a few minutes of talking to someone. It is how you do it that may be seen as being offensive to someone. Arrogance from a Christian has no place in a conversation with an unbeliever, . . or with anyone actually. I always ask new neighbors who move in if they will be looking for a church in the area, and I enthusiastically invite them to try ours if they haven’t looked or thought about it. We tell them to let us know when they want to attend and that we would meet them and sit with them so that they don’t feel like strangers. If the parents don’t seem enthused about it, I offer to take their kids to Sunday School with us, . . and parents sometimes like that . . it gives them a break on Sunday mornings, but guess what? . . soon they are coming to the church to see the children’s programs and activities when invited, and with their children attending, it always opens a door to talking to the parents about spiritual things in some manner. On Judgement Day, . . I hope I never have someone I know from work, my neighborhood or anyplace say, “Why didn’t you tell me about Jesus Christ? . . we worked together for 20 years” . . . “Why didn’t you tell me? . . we were neighbors!?” Wow ! . . that would break my heart to hear that. That person I meet for the first time and chat with in the grocery store line, . . will I ever see them again? . . . where will they spend eternity? If you know someone is going to get run over by a truck, do you wait to tell them “Stop!!” or “Watch out!”? . . food for thought. We must be obedient to our Lord, and what we do, we must do it out of love and be humble, . . we are but servants ourselves.
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘It takes eighteen months to make a baby elephant’? However well-meaning you are, you have to acknowledge that attempting to force something like as fundamental as faith, as important to the core of someone’s being, is not necessarily a tremendously bright, nor a particularly kind move.
It seems to me that one thing Christianity really needs is advocates who are smart, insightful, articulate and kind. Attempting to wrestle people into adopting your spiritual garments *will* alienate the more thoughtful ones.
Here’s a thought: divide your proselytes into, say two camps. In camp 1, train your people to adopt the method you outline above. In camp 2, teach your people to use tact, sensitivity and intelligence, and to exemplify your faith by their actions.
Allow to simmer and then compare and contrast.
Thom Rainer, just wanted to say I really appreciate your columns here and on the Christian Post. You are writing about the topics that Christians need to be reading these days if they’re going to have any impact on the world.
Thank you so much Clark.
I’d like to add another comment to what I already stated above. I think we fail in sharing the gospel because we fail to understand grace. It is grace that God has extended to us. He’s given us something wonderful that we don’t deserve. We haven’t earned it. When we grasp this then we can share this with those who are not Christians. We can show them that God offers them grace as well. This doesn’t mean that if we do everything just right in our witness that all will come to Christ but at least we will represent the true nature of God.