- Aug 27, 2014
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A poster posted the following quote in a thread on a different subforum and it really irritates me, but I didn't want to discuss it there because I didn't want to come off as though I was attacking the poster for posting it. The quote, which was posted in the context of a thread on why people have left Christianity in greater numbers since the mid-1990s until today then ever before, was the following:
“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” - Brennan Manning
I have a feeling how the conversation might have gone had I posted anything against it in that forum (since it was a non-confessional/heterodox forum), e.g., with references to John 13:35 or maybe even more to the point the Protestant song "They will know we are Christians by our love". Obviously I wouldn't want to argue against John 13:35 (though I don't believe it applies in this context; "By this, all will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another" -- not the apostate, atheist, etc., though of course we are to love everyone), but it's patently obvious what is wrong with quotes like this, right?
What constitutes the 'Christian lifestyle' is so contested outside of the traditional communions (and even within one of them...you know the one... ) that a simple look at how people live can't be correlated to their Christianity but by their ("our") explicitly doing so. Like if I am fasting 210+ days a year, and pray the Agpeya/Horologion every day at the appointed hours, and give to the needy, and so on, my atheist friends (which is everyone outside of the people I've specifically met in church) don't say "Wow, what a good Christian Jeremy is! There must be something to this Christianity thing!"; they say "Huh...he sure does a lot of 'church stuff'. Better him than me, because I don't want someone 'telling me what to do'" (sorry, my friends speak in a lot of scare quotes; I think it's a millennial thing). In fact, that was my own grandmother's reaction to me joining the Church (to wit, "Why would you want someone telling you what to do? Church is for weak people"), and she's 93 years old! (Please pray for her, if you can; her name is Jean.)
So I don't buy the central premise behind this that doing as we are supposed to do is inherently enough to show forth Christ to people who frankly don't seem to want to see Him in anything. And in fact, now that I think about it more while typing this, I'm relatively certain that if I told my friends (and grandmother) "No, I'm not doing this because anyone is making me; I'm doing it because I love God", they would think that even weirder. What kind of God says fast for most of the year and pray for hours every day and all this other stuff? Wouldn't He rather you ______? (Volunteer at a soup kitchen, rehabilitate sick animals, etc.; whatever other thing that literally anyone can do and doesn't require any explicit faith whatsoever. You know the "religion a social welfare dispensary indistinguishable from secular benefit systems" model, a.k.a. the godless religion that western secularists like.)
What would you guys say, as EO people, about a quote like this? Am I off-base in my criticism of it, or is there another way to approach it that might be more enlightening/enlightened?
Thank you.
“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” - Brennan Manning
I have a feeling how the conversation might have gone had I posted anything against it in that forum (since it was a non-confessional/heterodox forum), e.g., with references to John 13:35 or maybe even more to the point the Protestant song "They will know we are Christians by our love". Obviously I wouldn't want to argue against John 13:35 (though I don't believe it applies in this context; "By this, all will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another" -- not the apostate, atheist, etc., though of course we are to love everyone), but it's patently obvious what is wrong with quotes like this, right?
What constitutes the 'Christian lifestyle' is so contested outside of the traditional communions (and even within one of them...you know the one... ) that a simple look at how people live can't be correlated to their Christianity but by their ("our") explicitly doing so. Like if I am fasting 210+ days a year, and pray the Agpeya/Horologion every day at the appointed hours, and give to the needy, and so on, my atheist friends (which is everyone outside of the people I've specifically met in church) don't say "Wow, what a good Christian Jeremy is! There must be something to this Christianity thing!"; they say "Huh...he sure does a lot of 'church stuff'. Better him than me, because I don't want someone 'telling me what to do'" (sorry, my friends speak in a lot of scare quotes; I think it's a millennial thing). In fact, that was my own grandmother's reaction to me joining the Church (to wit, "Why would you want someone telling you what to do? Church is for weak people"), and she's 93 years old! (Please pray for her, if you can; her name is Jean.)
So I don't buy the central premise behind this that doing as we are supposed to do is inherently enough to show forth Christ to people who frankly don't seem to want to see Him in anything. And in fact, now that I think about it more while typing this, I'm relatively certain that if I told my friends (and grandmother) "No, I'm not doing this because anyone is making me; I'm doing it because I love God", they would think that even weirder. What kind of God says fast for most of the year and pray for hours every day and all this other stuff? Wouldn't He rather you ______? (Volunteer at a soup kitchen, rehabilitate sick animals, etc.; whatever other thing that literally anyone can do and doesn't require any explicit faith whatsoever. You know the "religion a social welfare dispensary indistinguishable from secular benefit systems" model, a.k.a. the godless religion that western secularists like.)
What would you guys say, as EO people, about a quote like this? Am I off-base in my criticism of it, or is there another way to approach it that might be more enlightening/enlightened?
Thank you.