It is sadly all too common to find people who reject
Jesus and the salvation that He gives, because of a bad experience they have
had of something connected to the Christian faith. This is a real tragedy and
it happens all the time.
Examples of people being put off the faith
For example, over the years I have heard a number of
people lamenting how they were raised to be Christians by parents who were
strong on discipline and enforcing strict rules, but who were weak on love and
affection. As they got older, these people rightly saw that the way they had
been raised wasn’t good. But they wrongly assumed that the Christian faith was
itself something that was weak on love and affection, and so they rejected the
faith as a result.
I myself had a different sort of bad experience when I
was a boy. I wasn’t raised Christian, but for a year or two when I was about
seven or eight years old, I was sent off to Sunday School once a week in a
local church. This church was pretty dead, and the way they did things left a
bad impression that led me to lose interest and think that the Christian faith
was boring and irrelevant.
A common and much more serious example is the sexual
abuse of children. We have all surely seen news reports of some so-called
Christian leader who has been convicted of child sex abuse. This seems to
happen with alarming frequency. Of course, anyone who does this is not a real
Christian, but even so, there are many people who want nothing to do with the
Christian faith as a result.
Another well-known example concerns Jewish people. At
various points in history, people calling themselves Christians have taken it
on themselves to start killing Jews in the name of Christ. Of course, none of
this was remotely the right thing to do, and the perpetrators were distorting
the Christian faith in a particularly evil way. But the result is that today
many Jews, as well as some non-Jews, want nothing to do with our faith.
Rejecting the Christian faith for reasons like
these doesn’t make sense
In all the examples I have given, people have seen an
abuse of the Christian faith and have drawn negative conclusions about the
faith itself. Everyone who reasons in this way, however, is making a big
mistake. The way they are thinking makes no sense.
It should be obvious that just because something is
abused, that does not at all have to mean that there is anything wrong with the
thing itself. And in each of the cases I listed above, there was a distortion
of how the Christian faith should actually be. In reality, our faith is not
weak on love and affection, it is not boring and irrelevant, it is horrified by
child sex abuse and even more horrified by murdering people.
Anyone can choose to call themself a Christian, but
this doesn’t mean that they actually are. And anyone can neglect important
parts of biblical teaching, but this doesn’t mean that they should.
So when people choose to reject the Christian faith
for any of these and other similar reasons, they are not basing their decision
on reality. Instead of making a rational choice, they are being influenced by a
caricature of our faith.
It’s all about Jesus
The Christian faith, however, is more than just a set
of principles, although it certainly includes these. Our faith is focused on
the Person who is Jesus Christ.
This Person is utterly good, loving and wonderful.
This Person volunteered to be tortured and executed on our behalf to rescue us
from the punishment we deserve for what we do wrong.
And the irony is that this Person really hates abuses
of the Christian faith. So when someone rejects our faith and the Jesus at the
centre of that faith because of abuses, they are actually rejecting the Person
who agrees wholeheartedly that the abuses are awful!
To put it simply, abuses of the Christian faith are in
no way Jesus’ fault. Whoever exactly is to blame for what goes wrong, it
certainly isn’t Him.
A plea
If anyone reading this has had a bad experience of something
connected to the Christian faith, please don’t let that cause you to conclude
that the faith itself is to blame. The undistorted, true version of our faith
is beautiful. It’s great. Even more importantly, the undistorted, true version
of Jesus is beautiful and great.
And please don’t use abuses of the Christian faith as
an excuse not to spend time considering whether our faith might actually be
true and Jesus might actually be the way to God that He claimed to be. You
might end up getting to know the One who hates abuses of the faith more than
anyone.
See also:
What Is the Christian Faith
Really All About?
Is It Arrogant for Christians to
Claim There Is Only One True Faith?
A Very Strong Piece of Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus
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