In Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz, there is a scene where Donald and several of his friends did something odd on their college campus in Seattle. The set up a “Christiany” booth on campus during a night known for debauchery and drunkenness. When other students heard about their project they thought it was the typical Christian “evangetable” where you can pick up a tract and some self-righteous judgement all in one stop, but their project was different. At their booth, someone from outside would come in and, instead of receiving judgement or condemnation inside, they would receive an apology from a Christian. An apology from someone they didn’t know for something that person didn’t do, but it was an apology for all the garbage (I have no other word for it) that Christians do while wearing the banner of Christ. I don’t mean just the crusades and witch hunts, but the present day garbage, and we have a lot of it.
Something happened yesterday in my regular old school day that reminded me of this scene in Blue Like Jazz. Yesterday I met with my discipleship group which now consists of two girls who, quote frankly, don’t want to be discipled. They don’t call themselves Christians and don’t want anything to do with Christianity. They go to QCS, they sit in chapel, they do their bible class homework, but they don’t want more “Jesus” than they already have to sit through.
And yesterday, I found out why.
Christians.
That word is so amorphous. So undefined. So blurry.
When asked to describe what a Christian is, these girls gave responses like this….
Judgmental.
Two-faced.
Not fun.
One way at chapel, another behind your back.
Judgmental.
Can’t watch certain movies or listen to certain music.
Self-Righteous.
Boring.
Judgmental.
“I want to be closer to God, but I don’t want to be a Christian.”
What do you do with a statement like that? And I can’t completely disagree with her. When I think about some things Christians (myself included) do, some thing in the name of Jesus, I don’t want any part of that. I don’t mean the big things either, I mean the small and seemingly insignificant actions.
The gossip and language.
The judgmental comments.
The self-righteous piety.
I read a post someone had shared on Facebook that communicated this sort of thing very well. Here it is.
How can we as Christians reverse these ideas and these stereotypes of Christianity? I think we do that by just changing the direction we point our fingers. For so long we’ve pointed our fingers at others; the murderer, the druggie, the whore, the thief. I don’t think we just switch the direction and point them back at us; the gossip, the prideful, the pious, the judgmental. I think we point to Christ. We are all messed up beyond all reason. We are all so full of junk it’s unbearable. But that’s why he came.
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:17
We are all sick. We are all sinners. We all need him. And I think that’s what I want my students to realize.
As our time in discipleship group closed I challenged the girls this week, everywhere they heard about Jesus, to not shut down and close their ears. Instead, I asked them to shut out every Christian they had ever known before, good or bad. I asked them to focus on Christ, not Christians. We’ll see.
“I like you Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
I pray today I can be more like Christ.
nicely said!
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