The tunnel of love.
Yup… I’m getting there.
Why I’m Not A Good Christian. Part 3.
(10) I get angry at Christians when they dramatize their spiritual battles.
Maybe this bullet is to my detriment. I dunno.
In my blog feed a while back, a post from a person who will remain nameless (I protect the innocent here.) came across my screen with the following title: “I am in a fight for my life! Please pray!” I could only imagine the horror that must have been unfolding for him while he was writing. Could it be that a tiny evil unicorn had broken into his home and had him pinned cowering in the corner with his laptop? Could his wife finally have snapped and been trying to beat him to death with her curling iron and he was using his laptop as a shield? Sadly, when I read the blog entry his “fight for his life” had to do with a bunch of his friends from work inviting him to go see a R rated movie that weekend. Where is the fight for his life in that? That was my question too… then I realized that he had made a commitment to God that he would not see any R rated movie on principle, but with this latest invite from his friends, his commitment was tested as he really wanted to go.
Ahem.
This example leans a bit to the extreme side, but it really isn’t far off from the way a lot of Christians face their spiritual battles. Giving poetic license or mental imagery to struggles in faith can produce beauty and art that glorifies and gives honor to God, and I don’t want to take anything away from that. I get angry when Christians start to supplement struggles with the dramatic.
Some of the most beautiful hymns I’ve sung and meaningful books I’ve read have been penned by people after they have had their lives broken. Whether they were coping with a tragic loss of a child, dealing with the pain of being imprisoned in a foreign land for their belief, or even while a cancer or terminal sickness ate away at their body, their hearts cried out to God and spilled onto paper in the form of life changing words.
I would make a safe assumption that if you were to poll a group of 100 Christians and ask how many of them would like to be able write such inspiring words you would see 100 hands shoot up. Ask the same crew how many of them would willing go through the same struggles the authors faced in order to obtain the inspiration to write these words and I doubt you would see a single hand rise.
Never-the-less, because some Christians so badly want that life changing Christ-like influence on other people, but are blessed enough to not have to go through a life changing trial, their alternative is to add drama and theatrics to issues that don’t warrant them. The closest analogy I can make would be for me to attend a military veteran’s convention, and having never severed in the military myself, make comparisons from the struggles in my day to day life to those of a solder’s combat experience. I believe this behavior would be seen as immature, and not a whole lot of people (if any) would take me seriously. In the same way I believe when you add theatrics instead of struggles to your testimony as a Christian, you are not only being disrespectful to those that have ‘earned’ their spiritual battle scars, but I doubt people are going to take you very seriously.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. - Hellen Keller
Why I’m Not A Good Christian. Part 2.
(6) I think it’s ok for Christians to own nice things.
I’m not even really sure how people got this idea stuck their heads, but none-the-less I hear over and over again a philosophy that Christians shouldn’t own nice things. “Nice things” is a pretty broad term, so just so there is no confusion I want to define it here. A “nice thing” can be anything a person likes that costs more money than you think that person should spend. Huge houses, fancy cars, elaborate vacations, speed boats, hot tubs, a collection of DVDs or even Elvis collector plates can all be examples of “nice things”. Personally my “nice things” would be my super sweet collection of Disney memorabilia, but anyway…
Before I get on my rant; I would actually like to take this issue out of the church and look at it without any theology attached. A fact of life is: people have different incomes. If you’ve busted your butt in medical school for 500 years and you are a highly specialized oncologist, then you are going to be making more than a person who didn’t go to college or is content to flip burgers for the rest of his life. (And just so its said, there is nothing wrong with that.) I think we all can agree, given these variables, Mr. Oncologist deserves every extra penny he makes over Mr. Fry Cook, right? I think so.
Ok, bring this back into the church. All of a sudden… we have a problem. Where as our now Christian oncologist may not necessarily be looked down upon for his higher income (Although there is no shortage of church-goers who do this anyway.) our now Christian fry cook is no longer poor… now hes theologically “storing treasures for himself up in heaven”. He will even advertise this fact! I’ve seen a bumper sticker before on an older, semi-beat up car that read: “Don’t let the car fool you, my treasures are up in heaven.” This type of public testimony is just wrong, and I can prove it.
Who would want to read a bumper sticker that said, “I’m storing my real treasures up in heaven” on the back of our Christian oncologist’s 2008 Lexus whatever. Theologically speaking, this bumper sticker could be 100% accurate, but when Christians see this spectical, we will automatically assume that the driver is sinning by associating to him a sense of pride and superiority– when the truth is we would be the ones sinning for making that association in the first place. You just can’t have this ideal of rich vs. poor “storing treasures in heaven” both ways; logically it doesn’t work, and that makes it wrong.
Having nice things and money is no more wrong than not having nice things and money; but I wish we could all agree that this is fact of income and life choices and not an issue of theology. If was really forced to explain this warped thinking, I would guess that this stems from feelings of envy and jealousy more than anything else. We just have to manifest these feelings as a matter of theology, because Christians aren’t supposed to be envious and jealous. Thats just my opinion; I could be wrong.
Read more
Why I’m Not A Good Christian. Part 1.
I’ve been thinking about stuff lately; especially with the little guy now hanging around my house. I’ve been trying to think about the lessons that I’ve learned spiritually (not just spiritually, but this is the focus of the post) and what lessons I want to pass to onto Logan. In the process of thinking about this, I actually came up with a bunch of reasons why I’m not a good Christian anymore. These are the first 5.
(1) I Still Think With My Head.
Not only do I constantly questions my own faith; but I also entertain logical arguments against Christianity. On top of that- if you’re argument is really persuasive, I’ll let you “win” the mini debate we’re having so I research the argument further later on. This also leads to me saying things like, “You know what? I don’t know” or “As a matter of fact, I don’t have all the answers.” This is something I’ve noticed that many other Christians have a problem with. But how can they honestly think that if they can’t explain the nature of the universe to a questioning soul within five minutes time that they have somehow failed that soul? It’s almost like some Christians feel their lack of knowledge gives God a black eye.
I will even take this a step further. If somebody can present me with empirical evidence that God does not or, that it is not possible for him to, exist; I will denounce Christianity. Ah… stalemate.