DO YOU HAVE TO BE A BIGOT TO BE A GOOD CHRISTIAN? BY JEFF COOK
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eaving a downtown bar on New Year’s Eve, I was affronted by the voice of a man across the street with a large loudspeaker and even a larger cross hoisted high over his shoulder. This man had a lot to say about wickedness, repentance and Jesus, but no one wanted to listen. Walking away, I was most concerned that my unchurched friends would assume that this man was speaking for me—since I am a pastor and, by all outward accounts, both this man and I are Christians. But the Jesus this street preacher was yelling about didn’t sound like the Jesus I know. Perhaps the street preacher with the loudspeaker has become a “what-not-to-do” caricature, yet we find Christians speaking out in cringe-worthy ways in the public square all the time. Take the theological statements following the Sandy Hook shooting, for a horrific example. The backlash was uproarious when a Fox News personality stated such violence should not be surprising—not when Americans have “systematically removed God from our schools.” Another influential voice of conservative faith in America soon caught up this same refrain, citing gay marriage and abortion as reasons God has “allowed this judgment to fall upon us.” Then on President Obama’s Inauguration day, a prominent pastor sent a controversial tweet that called into question the validity of the president’s claim of salvation—encased in the form of a pious call to prayer. Another pastor even went so far as to call the president
“spiritually blind” and an “evil hypocrite” before an audience of his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. It’s no wonder that in modern culture, Christianity is becoming increasingly synonymous with “hate group.” All this is enough to make the rest of us start to sweat and call out, “Please stop. You are ruining things for the rest of us!” But when you hear enough well-funded, title-holding professionals and ministers speaking nonsense, you begin to wonder: “Do I have to be a bigot to be a Christian?”
HIGH WIRE ACT
If you’re like me, such incidents move you not to become more outspoken about your faith— even to counter such incidents— but to become silent. In an attempt to not be branded as one of “them,” we’re tempted to make an equal and opposite error. Because of our experience with foot-shapemouthed Christians, we begin
to question not only the message but the delivery itself. So we become hesitant about speaking about faith at all—even when it might be valuable. If we speak out about what we believe, we risk being branded as “intolerant bigots” and even failing to be “wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16) as Jesus commanded. But if we remain silent, we fail to be the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13) sent to speak lifegiving truth into the world. In public discourse, it seems, neither the outspoken fool nor the mute glorifies God. Yet in the order to find a third way, the Church must face some crucial questions: What moral standards should we maintain among ourselves, and what standards should we promote in wider society among those who do not subscribe to the same divine moral law? Racism is clearly inappropriate for anyone, but should we hold those who are not believers of a Christian ethic to religious standards of sexuality, for instance? And once we’ve answered these questions, how then should we engage the laws of our country? Should we advocate for the legislation of Christian morality or simply recognize that secular government and the Church have different moral starting points? For all these questions and more, we are in need of wisdom. RELEVANT MAGAZINE
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