I have not read this book. I am not familiar with the author
and, while I am tentatively in agreement with the message implied in the title,
I am not in this commentary making a statement about the book itself.
I have however read a few statements in regard to the message it supposedly
preaches, and that is what I am addressing.
One friend made this statement: "Love one another as I have loved
you." Dear believing friends, I don't think we are doing so well... Our deeply
held beliefs sometimes sound a lot like hatred, not love. We need to find a better
way, or our witness is worthless.
That is a statement
that speaks the truth!
A Christian pastor
and author (John Pavlovitz) reviewing the book states (in part): Dear
White Evangelicals, [we] see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly
selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy… They see that pigmentation and
party are your sole deities. They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating
the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.. You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness.
And yet another
commenter (Peter McDonald) on the above review: I’m so glad the author does not
once call these people “Christians.” They are not. Obviously they haven’t read any
of the 4 Gospels. If they had, they’d be preaching and acting on the central message
Jesus brought: We are to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. That’s all.
It’s very simple. They do just the opposite. They have no right to claim to be acting
in Jesus’ name. They are not. They cannot call themselves “Christians.”
Here are two things that give me pause:
- Lumping "white Evangelicals" into one
group as if our skin tone has everything to do with our faith walk. "Pigmentation
and party are your sole deities" ???
He is using a pretty broad brush when he paints that picture. Let's be honest, Evangelicals
are certainly not the only group that show their intolerance to those they disagree
with. And people of color are certainly not exempt from hypocrisy and inconsistency.
- The reply by McDonald - while I agree that "they
will know we are Christians by our love", I am very hesitant to say that someone
else isn't a Christian.
When someone uses the term "Evangelical", to me that is simply
a euphemism for "Christian." It certainly is not referring to a Muslim,
Hindu, or Jewish person.
YES... I recognize and agree that there are people whose faith
walk is purely cultural and does not play out in the way they act or treat others.
But am I the one to make that call? And if I do, where does that fall in between
the two commands "Judge not, lest you be judged" and "Love one another"?
In Matthew 7, Jesus/Yeshua has a little bit to say about judging others:
“Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, for God will judge
you in the same way you judge others, and he will apply to you the same rules you
apply to others. Why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and pay
no attention to the log in your own eye? How dare you say to your brother, ‘Please,
let me take that speck out of your eye,’ when you have a log in your own eye? You
hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will be able to
see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.[1] However, The Bible’s command that we not judge others does not mean we
cannot show discernment. When Jesus said not to judge others, He did not mean that
no one can identify sin for what it is, based on God’s definition of sin.[2] In John 7, he goes on to give a direct command to judge:
“Stop judging by external standards, and judge by true standards.” [3]
Later he goes on to say: “My commandment is this: love one another,
just as I love you.”[4]
And later still, it is taught: “…do not believe all who claim to
have the Spirit, but test them to find out if the spirit they have comes from God.
For many false prophets have gone out everywhere. This is how you will be able to
know whether it is God's Spirit: anyone who acknowledges that Jesus Christ came
as a human being has the Spirit who comes from God. But anyone who denies this about
Jesus does not have the Spirit from God.”[5]
Elsewhere, the Apostle Paul comments: “the whole Law is summed up in one commandment:
“Love your neighbor as you love yourself… what our human nature wants is opposed
to what the Spirit wants, and what the Spirit wants is opposed to what our human
nature wants… what human nature does is quite plain. It shows itself in immoral,
filthy, and indecent actions… People become enemies and they fight; they
become jealous, angry, and ambitious. They separate into parties and groups…
[But] those who belong to Christ Jesus have put to death their human nature with
all its passions and desires.”
I have commented previously that there are a lot of people who self-identify
as “Christian” who do not wear that label well. But it is one thing to recognize
that a person’s actions speak louder than their words (or labels) and another thing
to make a judgement call about their salvation. Bottom line: when we say someone
is not a Christian, are we not saying they are not “saved”? That's what it sounds like to me..
In The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything,
author Steven M.R. Covey makes the statement, “We judge others by their actions
and ourselves by our intentions.”
I am guessing that until we start paying attention to the speck in
our own eyes we will not portray to the world an accurate picture of what a Christ-follower
should look like. Then, as my friend said, “Our witness is worthless.”
I will be putting the book Christians Against Christianity:
How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith by Obery
M. Hendricks Jr. on my TBR shelf and possibly comment later on my own reactions,
but I also highly recommend the book The Unsaved Christian: Reaching CulturalChristianity with the Gospel by Dean Inserra.
