5 Things People Get Wrong About Christians
Christianity has been the most successful faith in world history and has been integral to America’s success, although you will rarely hear people say that these days. Instead, we get non-stop criticism of Christians. It would take a book to respond to every criticism and slur aimed at Christians, but it is worth taking the time to answer some of the most popular gibes here.
1) Christianity requires people to be judgmental: On the contrary, Christians have been instructed to love the sinner and hate the sin, which is good because we’re all sinners.
Christians also frequently have rules we are supposed to follow that we wouldn’t have necessarily come up with ourselves. For example, if I were writing the rules, I’d very selfishly make it morally acceptable to have sex outside of marriage. Nevertheless, sex outside of marriage is a sin regardless of how I may feel about it. As a Christian, I don’t hate people (uh… including myself – I would never claim to be perfect) who have had sex outside of marriage, but as a Christian, I am not allowed to say it isn’t a sin.
Those are just the rules, but again, there are no rules that require Christians to hate people who disagree with them. Quite the opposite, in fact:
Just to be clear, Jesus wasn’t endorsing their behavior; he was just being kind to them in spite of it and hoping to guide them to the light. We Christians should aspire to do the same thing. If you need a Christian to endorse your bad behavior, hopefully you won’t find any takers, but that doesn’t mean they hate you or find you irredeemable.
That being said, are there Christians who spew venom and hatred at people they disagree with morally, anyway? Of course, because being Christian doesn’t transcend being human, and we humans often tend to be petty, hateful creatures. At least Christianity, as it should be practiced, tries to get us to transcend our hateful tendencies and follow Christ’s example.
2) Christians are anti-science: I’ve never actually met a Christian in America that I think it would be fair to call “anti-science.” I have met Christians who don’t buy into global warming or argue against the validity of COVID vaccines because they believe the scientific evidence is lacking for those things, but of course, that’s a disagreement over science, not being anti-science.
Sometimes, people like to claim Christians are anti-science if they disbelieve in evolution. This is quite silly, seeing as how if evolution exists, that was merely the manner in which God chose to create and change life. As a Christian, I see no scientific conclusions from the Big Bang on down that potentially conflict with my faith. The vast majority of us see it the same way.
All that being said, I have met a great number of people of all types who feel very comfortable disregarding scientific evidence when it conflicts with their ideological agenda, policy goals, or self-interest. For example, start asking people who claim Christians are “anti-science” what a woman is or whether a man can become a woman just because he chooses to do so, and you will probably find their answers have very little to do with science.
3) Christians want a theocracy: In my entire life, I have yet to ever actually meet a Christian who wants a theocracy, although like every other form of weirdness under the sun these days, I’m sure they exist online.
That being said, the idea that devout Christians would like to overthrow our republic to replace it with… oh, I don’t know, the Pope, Franklin Graham, and Joel Osteen, is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.
Christians just want their rights preserved under the Constitution like every other group in America, and once you study the early years of America and see how infused it was with the Christian religion, you’ll find Christians have a lot of valid complaints about the way, ”separation of church and state” is legally interpreted, particularly since that phrase isn’t even in the Constitution.
4) Christianity keeps people from doing all the “fun” things they want to do: Christians can do anything they want, just like everyone else. The difference is we have a moral code we’re expected to abide by, and if we commit adultery or rob a bank, it makes it very hard to do the normal thing humans do, which is engage in all sorts of intellectual backflips to convince ourselves why it’s actually moral and good that we did something horrible.
Here’s the thing most people miss, though: Ultimately, almost everything Christians believe is a sin is also a bad idea that you would be better off not doing in the first place, despite it potentially being enjoyable. Even the Bible itself notes that sin can have “fleeting pleasures.”
It’s fun to sleep with someone else’s wife until it ruins their marriage and the husband tries to kill you. It’s fun to steal money and spend it until you get caught. It’s fun to get your way by lying until people find out about it, and you have to deal with the consequences.
I would argue with you that most of the sins in the New Testament are like this. What that means is that even if you didn’t believe in Christianity at all, you’d still almost certainly have a better, happier life if you avoided the things the Bible tells you not to do.
5) Christians are hypocrites: It’s always a great scandal when someone who professes to be a Christian, cheats on his wife, gets caught with a prostitute, or otherwise sins. That’s fine as far as it goes. In fact, at this point in our culture, our country would be better off if Americans were much, much more easily scandalized by the immoral behavior of prominent people, Christian or otherwise.
However, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to believe that Christians will never do immoral things because we Christians ourselves will openly tell you that…
We Christians know we’re weak, fallible, and broken creatures embracing Christianity in an effort to become saintly people. However, we will NEVER reach our goal. We will never be perfect like Jesus.
On the other hand, a man who shoots at the stars and falls short may still reach the moon. We can’t be perfect, but we can be better. If this is hypocrisy, be glad of it. The alternative is a society dragged into a sewer by sociopaths who refuse to condemn any sort of degenerate behavior on the grounds that they don’t want to be hypocrites one day if they engage in it.