What is It That Can Lead So Many Christians to be well....UnChristian?

It’s been almost ten years since I read it.  And still the authors’ conclusions haunt me.   I can’t get them out of my head.   They haunt me because I know.  They tell the truth.   After all, they asked people, thousands of people, these questions.   They did the research.  They got the data.  And the data doesn’t lie.   The researchers David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons asked basically this question to outsiders to Christianity.  They asked. How would you describe Christians?   They got three top answers.  They went in this order: Anti-gay, judgmental and hypocritical.  And the lower ranked answers did not get any better.  Almost every descriptor was negative.  

These outsiders didn’t come to these conclusions because of TV or movies or some other media.  They came to those conclusions because of Christians they had met.   They came to those conclusions because of a church they had attended or grown up in.   So Kinnaman and Lyons came to a painful conclusion.  How did outsiders view Christians?  They viewed them as UnChristian.  Thus, that became the title of their book, UnChristian.

Those negative perceptions have only gotten worse.  Now one in four Americans describe themselves as nones, as in no religion at all.    That pretty much ties them with Evangelicals and Catholics respectively.  And the younger you go, the bigger the numbers get.   For those between the ages of 18 and 44, almost one out of every two claim no religion.   Don’t get me wrong.  Most still believe in God.  But living out that belief in a church?  No way.

These problems have to some extent always been around.   Fifty years ago, the writer Sheldon Vanauken said it this way.

The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness.  But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians – when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.

How do those thousand deaths happen?  They happen because Christians forget one absolutely crucial truth.    And when Christians do, literally everything goes to hell. What is that truth?  In these words, God shows you the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Galatians 2:1-10 

What is that truth, that if you forget it, messes up everything?   In just six words, in what you just heard, God tells you.  Basically, God says in these words.   All you need is Jesus, nothing more, nothing less.   But that truth you can easily miss, including here.   More than that, you can even think you are living that truth, when you may be missing it more than you think.  What do I mean?

To understand that you need to understand more what Paul is talking about here.  Paul is giving you some history.   When Paul share the good news of Jesus with Gentiles, he got serious pushback from other Christians.   So, Paul, along with his co-worker, Barnabas, went straight to the top.  They went to Jerusalem.   They went to Jerusalem to tell the Apostles, the top leaders of the church, exactly what they were saying.   So, what did those top leaders tell them.   In six short words, Paul tells you.  He says.  “these leaders contributed nothing to me.”  Now what the heck does that mean?   To be honest, this translation can make you think Paul means he didn’t get any monies or support from them.  It’s like Paul is saying.   I did it all on my own. 

But that’s not what this means at all.   Basically, Paul is saying.  I told these leaders the message I’ve been sharing.   And what did they say?  They said.   We’ve got nothing to add.   You’ve got the message down, Paul.   You don’t need to add a thing.

And that’s crucial because the people pushing back on Paul were telling him the exact opposite.  You do got to add something...  Sure, talk about Jesus.  But don’t stop there.  No, you’ve got to give them Jesus and…this.   And what was this?   These folks were saying.  You’ve got to give them the clean laws.  You’ve got to talk about things like circumcision, keeping kosher, all that stuff.

But Paul said to them.  No way!  I am not going there ever!   Now, I like my bacon, and certainly circumcision is no picnic, but still come on Paul.  What’s the big deal?  Couldn’t Paul have been a little more easy-going, maybe met them half-way on the rules?  No, Paul couldn’t.   Paul knew.  Paul knew why these laws existed. 

You see. These laws qualified you for the presence of God.   If you messed up these rules, you could not go to the temple.  You could not be part of the family of God.   You were not fit to stand in God’s presence.  You were unclean.   And they had a lot of these rules.   Touch a dead body? Unclean.  Have a wet dream?  Unclean.   Be on your period.  Unclean.  

Now these rules came about for some reasonable reasons.  They helped the Israelites find an identity that kept them from getting coopted by all the other religions around them.  More crucially, in these rules, God was making a crucial point.  God was saying.    You can never be clean enough to come before me.   You cannot make that happen.  So, I God will make it happen.  I’ll make a way for you to get clean.  That’s why God put all the sacrifices in place.  God was making it clear in these sacrifices. Cleaning you up, even for a little while, costs something.   It does not come free.

But in those sacrifices, God was getting them ready. God was getting them ready for the ultimate sacrifice that God was going to make.   In Jesus, made that sacrifice.  In Jesus, God sacrificed everything, everything to make you clean, not just for a little while, but for forever.  In Jesus, God offered up everything so that nothing would keep you from the presence of God ever again.   God opened that door forever.  And nothing, God says, not even death will close it. 

But Paul knew. Putting those clean rules out there again, that changes the whole message.   Those rules told you.   Jesus is not enough to get you there.  You need more.  You need more to be clean.  You need more to be fit for the presence of God.   But you don’t.  That’s the whole point.    All you need is Jesus, nothing more, nothing less. 

Now you might think.  Ok, that’s great and all.   But I eat bacon.   And sure, I may not want to touch a dead body, but not because I think it takes me away from God.  What does any of this stuff have to do with me?   It has to do with you because you may have your own cleanliness code and not even know it.   What do I mean?

When God gave the children of Israel these rules, they backfired.  They began to think they could keep them.   They could make themselves clean.   But this delusion just gave them anxiety and fear.   It gave them self-righteous and judgmentalism.  It didn’t bring them closer to God.  It took them further away.  But they thought, they were closer to God than ever.  It made them slaves.  But they thought they were free. 

The same thing can happen to you.   It happened to these folks criticizing Paul.  They thought they were Christians.  But they didn’t get it at all. 

You can believe in Jesus, even become super-involved in your church, and miss the truth.   You can think you’re close to God when you are further away than ever.  How?  You’re not really believing it’s Jesus, nothing more, nothing less. No, you believe.  It’s Jesus, yes and….(you fill in the blank)

How do you know, you might have a Jesus and something else?  Let me ask you a few questions. 

Is there some-thing that if you fail at in your life it crushes you, overwhelms you with guilt.  It makes you doubt yourself, your worth, your value.   You’ve got a Jesus and…   

Is there something that you fear or get anxious about not having or losing too much?  You’ve got a Jesus and…...

Is there something you are driven to have?  You feel you must have this or your life will not be complete, fulfilled?   You’ve got a Jesus and…..

Is there something that if you don’t get it or you lose it, you get so angry.  Why?  It means that much to you.   You’ve got a Jesus and…..

Something is enslaving you.  It has come to mean too much.   Think about it.  If all you ultimately need is Jesus, nothing more and nothing less, then you don’t need to sweat anything ultimately.   To riff off of the well-known book title.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  And when you have Jesus, it’s all small stuff.   

Or think about it another way.   If you attend a church, have you seen someone in church and thought?   It’s nice that they’re here but they really need to do something about that smell or that attitude or that behavior.   But if it’s Jesus alone, nothing more and nothing less, does that ultimately matter?   Is it possible that you are putting in an "and" after Jesus?  As in yes, you need Jesus, but you kinda also need to do this to fit in here.  But if Jesus has taken you just as you are, with all your baggage.   Then that means, everyone who comes in belongs here.  It’s not our family.  It’s God’s.  And in Jesus, God paid the ultimate price so that you can come, I can come, anyone and everyone can come, so that everyone belongs.   It’s Jesus, nothing more, nothing less.  

And when we forget that, that’s when the judgmentalism rises up, when the self-righteousness comes, when we fall back into slavery, when Christianity dies a thousand deaths.   But when God reminds you that nothing matters but Jesus, what God has done for you in him, that frees you.  It frees you to live in this glorious truth.  God has made you and I utterly clean, utterly worthy, utterly beloved.  And nothing can change that now or forever amen.