That Popular Gloomy Quote

A few posts back, I asked for your response to this "provocative but gloomy quote" from the Barna Group. 

"The vast majority of (secularists) don't need to hear the Good News. They have been exposed to Christianity in an astonishing number of ways, and that's exactly why they're rejecting it. They react negatively to our 'swagger', how we go about things, and the sense of self-importance we project." They quote one outsider as saying: "Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, antigay, antichoice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who doesn't believe what they believe."

Lots of you had lots to say.  A few highlights:

From Kathleen:

I think I'm saddened/irritated anew by that quote, having been rubbed the wrong way by people judging me based on finding out I am a person of faith before they know me at all. I have a long standing good friendship with a gal who claims to be an atheist and going back 10 years, admitted that she was trying to refuse my friendship based on the simple fact that she heard I was a Christian.

From Matt:

This quote is a bummer. I remember a sermon once that said "Jesus--good. Religion--bad." I wonder if this is one of those classic cases where religion trumps Jesus in the eyes of secular culture.

Then again on the flip side, I was a Christian-hating superior atheist myself before coming to faith, and I discovered much to my surprise that my (mis)-perceptions were largely rooted in my own resistance to God and running from his truth.

From  Bill:

One simple way to combat this (accurately stated) perception of us is to make sure that we are living better than we are speaking.

From Krissy:

This quote DOES make me sad, even as I totally relate to it... that is the exact assessment of Christians I used to have. I'm so grateful that I have had the chance to meet Christians who don't fit that description at all. However,now that I live in the Bible belt, I DO meet a lot of Christians who are very conservative, anti-gay, anti-Democrat, pro-gun, pro-war, etc. Some (but not all) of them ARE very afraid and angry about the so-called "agendas" of "the gays" and "the liberals." And yet, when I scratch the surface, these people are not quite the monsters I expected them to be.

From Paul:

I talked with an elderly lady this week who said that she's recently met two people that she recognizes as 'intelligent' which she believes actually follow Jesus and it gives her hope for relationship with a living God. She has had a hard life and has pursued spirituality through many different traditions, including denominational Christianity, Yogi, Buddhism, and perhaps others. I got the sense from talking with her the Christians she met early in her life were similar to those mentioned in the survey.

From Evan:

The tension I feel is, how do I throw religion under the bus and still love the whole church? I really love the church, even the people in the congregations I could never attend; but religious form makes me sort of sick and angry.

From Jason:

The current cultural climate tempts us to engage in polemics and failing that resort to caricaturing the other side. The Barna Group are doing exactly this. The pharisee which lives in all of us would have us do the same.

And, finally, a book plug from Richard (I checked out this book and, based on Richard's sterling recommendation, ordered it, even though IT'S ALMOST 900 PAGES LONG AND WRITTEN BY A PHILOSOPHER--I'm clearly working out some sort of issue here, so I'll give you Richard's plug):

Have you read Charles Taylor's A Secular Age yet? It shows the depth of the challenge in much greater depth than unChristian.

I give you snippets from so many people only to illustrate that this feeling of being robustly judged by outsiders does provoke responses in us--great and thoughtful ones, as above, but responses. My take, for what it's worth, is to take the perception seriously.  For all the judgment we could take in from such a quote (and given that we all roundly judge each other, maybe it's not a surprise that such judgment exists), I find myself leaning more towards feeling like the quote is a helpful reminder not to, in fact, be the negative things listed there.

Thanks so much for your great comments.  Keep 'em coming!

Comments

[Otto]

I wanted to comment on this quote a while back but didn't get to it... I can relate to some of these opinions towards Christians as I have felt them myself. I have a bunch of friends who are agnostic (especially back from my agnostic days). Not many who are staunch atheists, I would say a lot more who just have no desire for organized religion, some of them who believe in God but perhaps don't hold the Bible as the only or unquestionable word of God. At the same time I have a bunch of Christian friends with strong faith, genuine love, and a lot of wisdom that I feel is clearly from God. And as I have been following Jesus I have myself grown in faith and love and wisdom (I hope, or else I'm deluding myself!). So what I'm saying is I can really empathize with both sides, the people who have these views of Christians and the Christians who would feel it's unfair.

I am logical, I tend to question everything, and at the same time I see the limits of the logical mind, and I see that there is value in emotions in discerning the truth. Also, a relationship with God... this really appeals to me and makes sense to me. And as I grapple with faith, I see that some of what I do is blaming Christianity for things that are wrong in the world (such as U.S. imperialism), and even for my life not working, as I did in a recent post on facebook. I wonder if my own impulse to blame, to judge, is the same impulse that creates a lot of these (mis)perceptions of Christians. Regardless of which side of the faith fence we're on, it's always tempting to judge, stereotype, and make wrong. So I think the challenge for Christians is not just to "make sure that we are living better than we are speaking" (to prove them wrong!) but to really forgive the judgment of others. This kind of forgiveness is hard.. it's easy to forgive a person who asks for forgiveness (sometimes), it's harder to forgive a whole group of people who don't even want your forgiveness!