Lead Worship

unChristian – Chapter 3: Hypocritical

Posted on June 26th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: unchristian.

“Everyone in my church gave me advice about how to raise my son, but a lot of the time they seemed to be reminding me that I have no husband-and besides, most of them were not following their own advice. It made it hard to care what they said. They were not practicing what they preached” (page. 41).

“Part of this stems from immersion in a mean-spirited and fault-finding society. Having been the target of countless advertisements and thousands of messages and lectures, Mosaics and Busters recognize word games and are sensitive to inconsistent lifestyles. They are skeptical of what others say-even if they have little reason to be wary” (page 42).

“Eighty-five percent of young outsiders have had sufficient exposure to Christians and churches that they conclude present-day Chrsitianity is hypocritical. And as I have pointed out, negative perceptions also bleed into the perspectives of young churchgoers-half agreed that Christianity is hypocritical (47 percent)” (page 42).

“By a wide margin, the top life priorities of eighteen to twenty-five-year-olds are wealth and personal fame” (page 44).

“They see Christianity through the same protect-your-image-at-all-costs lens. Like their own choices and priorities, they believe that everyone says and does whatever is necessary to get ahead” (page 44).

“Yet they have become so jaded by the holes in people’s lifestyles that they are no longer shocked to find incongruence between words and actions.
“This gives the critique that Christianity is hypocritical even more potency. We are not known for the depth of our transparency, for digging in and solving deep-seated problems, but for trying to project an unChristian picture of haing it all together. Youg outsiders believe that rather than being able to help them sort through the image-is-everything world, followers of Christ are playing the very same mind games that they are” (page 44).

“Based on a study released in 2007, we found that most of the lifestyle activities of born-again Christians were statistically equivalent to those of non-born-again Christians. When asked to identify their activities over the last thirty days, born-again believers were just as likely to bet or gamble, to visit a pornographic website, to take something that did not belong to them, to consult a medium or psychic, to physically fight or abuse someone, to have consumed enough alcohol to be considered legally drunk, to have used an illegal, nonprescription drug, to have said something to someone that was not true, to have gotten back at someone for something he or she did, and to have said mean things behind another person’s back.
“NO DIFFERENCE.” (page 47.)

“If these groups of people were in two separate rooms, and you were asked to determine, based on their lifestyles alone,which room contained the Christians, you would be hard-pressed to find much difference” (page 47).

“There is a twist-a deeper reason why the perception of hypocrisy exists. It’s not just our lifestyles that have gotten us in trouble; it’s the very way in which we convey the priorities of being a Christian. The most common message people hear from us is that Chritianity is a religion of rules and regulations. They think of us as hypocritical because they are measuring us by our own standards” (page 48).

“Two-thirds of churchgoers said, ‘Rigid rules and strict standards are an important part of the life and teaching of my church.’ Three out of every frive churchgoers in America feel that they ‘do not measure up to God’s standards.’ And one-quarter admitted that they serve God out of a sense of ‘guilt and obligation rather than joy and gratitude’”(page 51).

“Our passion for Jesus should result in God-honoring, moreal lifestyles, not the other way around” (page 51).

“Our research shows that Christians believe the primary reason outsiders have rejected Christ is that they cannot handle the rigorous standards of following Christ. There is a nuance here that allows Christians to feel like they’re better than other people, more capable of being holy and sinless. We rationalize that outsiders don’t want to become Christ followers because they can’t really cut it” (page 51).

“Outsiders said they have never become a Christ follower for a number of other reasons: because they have never thought about it, because they are not particularly interested in spirituality, because they are already committed to another faith, or because they are repelled by Christians.
“When the primary way we measure our faith is based on liefstyle, it is easy to assume that the missing ingredient for outsiders is virtuous, moral living. Again, moral issues are not inherently wrong priorities. God deeply cares about our ations, asshould we. Yet don’t our priorities seem backward?
“The gospel-the Good News of Jesus-is that God has released us from the endless striving to measure up to God’s standards, let alone the expectations of other human beings” (page 52).

“Spirituality is not measure just by the number of sermons we hear, the piety of our lives, or the goodness of our actions”(page 59).

“The problem is not fundamentally hypocrisy. We’re all hypocrites at some level. The problem is the air of moral superiority many of us carry around. We stop acknowledging the imperfections in our lives. We forget where we came from and all God has done in our lives” (page 61).

“The perception of hypocrisy also emerges  when we start fighting the ‘culture war’-meaning we attack people’s behavioral patterns rather than love them as people”(page 61).

“Young peple will not communicate with and seek help from parents, pastors, and teachers whose lifestyles and passions do not match their words and faith. They will go to those who will embrace relationship with them; those who are also hurting and who are willing to share it”(page 64-65).

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