Ten days ago I quoted four friends who don’t appreciate the way Tim Tebow expresses his faith. Before 24 hours had passed, this became the most viewed post I’ve ever done. It would be a stretch to say it went viral, but it was mildly contagious. Thanks, Tim! Many people commented (although not actually on my blog, but through Facebook). The comments fell into three categories: 1) Get off his back, he’s living out his faith in a wonderful way; 2) I agree, he’s obnoxious; or 3) Judge not, lest ye be judged – which is sort of a variant on Rodney King’s famous “Why can’t we all just get along?” Well, we don’t get along. According to the unassailable source Wikipedia, there are 38,000 Christian denominations worldwide, and even if their number is off by 10,000 or so, the fractured nature of the Body of Christ is still staggering. For the first thousand years after the time of Christ there was one denomination, until the Eastern and Western churches split. 500 years later Christian divisiveness really picked up after the Protestant Reformation. But still – 38,000? That’s embarrassing!
Within that wide spectrum of belief is a camp called American Evangelical Christianity (which is an ethos instead of a denomination). Even though this group has been making its presence known for about thirty-five years, many media commentators don’t understand American Evangelical culture and don’t quite get the story right. For many Evangelicals, the real issue in the Tebow conversation is how Christians should relate to the rest of the world and share their faith. Is Tebow a model of how to do that or a model of how not to do that?
I asked my friend Bob from Chicago, who commented here on Tebow last week, for some further thoughts about the question of how Christians should relate to the rest of the world. I would call Bob an incisive thinker and uneasy Evangelical. My observation is that there are Evangelicals and uneasy Evangelicals. Uneasy Evangelicals tend to begin a lot of sentences with “I’m sorry.” Other Evangelicals believe they have nothing to apologize about. (And in case you are counting, I believe the uneasy Evangelicals are in the minority.)
Here is a bit of what Bob the uneasy Evangelical said: “It comes down to how Christians define their purpose. Many Evangelicals define themselves in tandem with the ‘Great Commission,’ which says to go make disciples, and believe they are compelled to go ‘make Christians.’
“The problem with this posture is when Evangelicals carry out their mandate to make Christians at the expense of the great commandment to love God and love our neighbors. When Evangelical tactics divide our culture in the name of making Christians, it’s a problem.
“Many Christians believe it is their responsibility to ‘save’ humanity. If we could just convince our government and corporations to say ‘Merry Christmas’ instead of ‘Happy Holidays,’ then we’ll have a much better chance of saving our country. The flaw in this thinking is that they believe humanity can save humanity. That’s God’s responsibility. Humanity was created by God, for God, and for community. We were made to love and be loved.”
That’s worth thinking about, especially his line about Evangelical tactics dividing our culture in the name of making Christians. I take this to mean when the method becomes confrontational it is in conflict with the greater message of love. Hence the need for uneasy Evangelicals to apologize for things like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Jimmy Swaggart, The 700 Club, certain Presidential candidates, etc. Of course, some of this bleeds into the dorky Christian category that uneasy Evangelicals also feel the need to apologize for, like Jim and Tammy Faye, gospel ventriloquists, a lot of autoharp and recorder music, Pat Boone, Kirk Cameron movies, highway billboards in an Old English font, etc.
What do you think?
I agree with your friend. "Saving" people is God's job, not ours. I believe every attempt as a human being to try to "save" anyone or anything comes from a place of manipulation.....not from a place of love. Love = freedom. Weren't we created with free will so that we could choose how we wanted to live our lives? So that we weren't manipulated, controlled by an overbearing, "God who is always right" kind of being? How many people would really be "saved" in that kind of environment? I would doubt many would. But, on the other hand....looking at freedom.....well, there's TONS of ways for God to reach us, just as many as there are of us in the human race. And, doesn't that speak much more to a God of love, of one who made us as we are, and who knows perfectly how to reach us individually? With whatever message we really need? I would think that for anyone who values their freedom, to be faced with the first version would cause them to run in the other direction. Ok, now I have to dive into the whole issue of time and place. And, perspective. Which lens do we see through? For myself, I highly doubt there is any chance that God would choose to reach me through a football game, or a player who is using some kind of hand signals to proclaim his faith in God. But, that's because I have a real problem with professional football, so I rarely watch it, and through my lens, I'd question the validity of any of them using that medium to profess their faith. So, for me personally, this is why I have a hard time with evangelicals because I think it can be a dicey proposition to try to "reach" others without truly knowing them, without knowing whether or not you are actually offending them rather than "saving" them. But, then again, I go back to my first statement, which is that it's God's job to do the saving. Not mine. Ok, end of my diatribe! Thanks for the post, and for making me think.
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