Excerpt
Dare to Drop the Pose
OneI Cant Stand a Lot of ChristiansI Iove Christ. It’s His followers who make me crazy.
Truth is, I dislike a lot of Christians. Notice I didn’t say some Christians, but a lot of them. I don’t like them—not at all, not even a little bit. Many times I’d rather hang around wild, swearing, heathen, lost people than self-righteous, hypercritical, narrow-minded, so-called believers.
I relate a lot to a certain pastor of a large church. He once told a reporter in an interview that he prays for six hours a day. Astonished, the reporter asked why he prays so long. The pastor replied honestly, “My church is very large—and there are so many people that I hate—I have to pray six hours to help me love them."
I wish I liked all Christians, but I don’t. Here’s the short list of reasons why. I dislike many Christians because they can be so darned judgmental. They act holier-than-thou, and they can be incredibly condescending. They’ll fight and argue about the dumbest things.
You’re reading the wrong Bible version. Your church has the wrong worship style. You don’t teach enough from the Old Testament. Why don’t you do more expository preaching? Your church isn’t evangelistic enough. You are too evangelistic, and you don’t do enough discipleship. These “church experts” are often the ones who don’t know their own lost next-door neighbor’s name! Aaauuuggghhhh! It makes me sick. Then when you get outside of church issues, it’s even more fun:
All R-rated movies are off-limits. (I loved it when The Passion of the Christ came out.) If you listen to secular music, you’re of the devil. Don’t get a tattoo. Don’t watch Teletubbies. Don’t go to Disney World
I can’t picture Jesus drawing these lines in the sand.
Another guy who turns my stomach is Angry Street Preacher:
Turn or burn! You’re going to hell, you sinner! In my own experience, Angry Street Preacher is often sinning as much as or more than any of the passersby he’s shouting at.
If my previous rant wasn’t enough, to top it off, Christians can be just plain weird—really weird. Take Christian television. Some of those people make my job almost impossible. If even I—supposedly on the same team with them—am tempted to make fun of their goofiness, is it any wonder that non-Christians watch them just for laughs? I know some very valuable Christian ministries are on television, and I’m all for them, but you have to admit, there’s some out-and-out flaky stuff.
If you’re offended, be honest for a moment. Have you seen the way many of the televangelists dress? Add to it their overly made-up wives’ long eyelashes and Pepto-Bismol-colored hair. They look like a pimp and his bimbo—and even the real pimp and the real bimbo would call it bad taste. Not to mention the unbiblical, self-centered, God-is-going-to-make-me-rich-so-I-can-drive-a-Rolls-Royce crap.
Then they top it off with that phony, insincere, I’m-going-to-get-your-money way of preaching, adding an “-uh!” to the end of every sentence. “And … Jesus rose from the grave-uh! And He will forgive your sins-uh! Call on Him now-uh!”
WHAT’S THAT?
It makes me want to puke-uh!
Probably the worst, though, is that Christians can be so stinking hypocritical. They’ll say one thing and do another. Not only does that tarnish Jesus’ name, but it gives the skeptical, nonbelieving world more ammunition to use against the body of Christ.
It’s like the guy who went to the Baptist pastor and said, “Brother Smith, would you perform a funeral for my dead dog?” Brother Smith replied, “We don’t do funerals for dogs.”
“Oh,” the man replied, seeming disappointed, but inwardly smiling. “I was going to give $100,000 to the church. I guess I’ll have to give it to the Methodists.
“Wait a minute!” Brother Smith quickly replied. “Why didn’t you say your dog was a Baptist?”
Those are a few of the reasons I dislike a lot of Christians. To be fair, a lot of them don’t like me, either. I’m too radical. I have shallow theology. I’m too good at marketing. And my unpardonable sin: I pastor a “megachurch” (which automatically makes me an egomaniac who only cares about money).
Now that that’s on the table, we can start, and hopefully we can get somewhere God wants us to be—which is probably not where I am right now. Just the same, I feel better after venting.
Thanks for listening.
