Why would people reject the teachings of Jesus because of the bad behavior of Christians? People who fail him do not demonstrate that his teachings are worthless.
If we humans were good at keeping our priorities straight, we would never have come up with the idiomatic sentence:
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If you see someone behaving badly who claims to be a Christian, does that make Jesus a fool? If his so-called followers don’t do what he teaches, would you be embarrassed to associate with such obvious hypocrites? But if Jesus was a wise teacher, why not be a Christian in secret? Or be a Jesus follower and avoid calling yourself a Christian?
You might, like me, prefer to avoid church. But community has many benefits for both our mental and physical health. Find a way to be with people while also following Jesus. Don’t be embarrassed by Jesus; be embarrassed about his ignorant or fallible followers.
I thought about finding an image of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but decided to go a different direction.
Being an outdoor person and a tool user, I try not to do stupid things. It is easy to pay insufficient attention or fail to prepare for anticipated challenges. I just used ChatGPT for the first time to create the following images:
A guy wants to cut out a bad limb, but is going about it in a stupid way. This was my first use of ChatGPT. On the left, I asked for an image by typing, “man sitting on a tree limb, sawing the limb he is sitting on.” Since I wanted the cut to be toward the tree trunk, I requested the second image, on the right, by typing, “man sitting on a tree limb, sawing the limb at a location next to himself and toward the tree trunk.” Finally, I made an edit to that image, asking for the limb to be of a smaller diameter. I anticipate a reader comment: “At least the guy on the right isn’t going to cut his balls off!”
Now, where were we?
I remain a Jesus-follower, even though we hear endless stories of those who claim to obey him but fail miserably. What’s worse is that in many of these stories, the reprobates maintain their innocence and claim to be stellar examples of how Christians should think and behave.
These misguided individuals help fuel the exodus of young people from churches and their cynical claims to follow the modern religion of the “nones.” I suggest we throw a bright light on the failures, rather than try to hide or minimize them. After all, Jesus is not to blame for people’s hypocrisy. We may be able to continue advocacy for Jesus by showing that his teaching would lead to behavior opposite to that of these reprobates.
However, nobody really needs the gory details of sexual misconduct, power-grubbing, embezzlement, excessive pride, etc. If your chosen news sources don’t already inundate you with enough lurid descriptions, you can always do an internet search. Some sites are dedicated to providing lists of fallen religious leaders, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon—you name it.
What do the reprobates all have in common? Usually, a lust for power and a feeling of being dominant over others. Psychologists tell us that even sex crimes have more to do with power and control rather than sexual gratification.
But another obvious commonality is that they are all human. People want to be respected for their talents, great wisdom, leadership skills—whatever. But they also grapple with temptations they usually don’t want to admit. Some reprobates don’t even grapple—they fully commit to hypocritical behavior because for them the rewards outweigh the risk of exposure.
As a Jesus follower, I ask whether any of this should lead us to reject his teaching. He did not pretend that any of us is invulnerable to hypocrisy, but he warned against it. Particularly toward his followers, he asked, in Luke 6:
Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?
Another human foible is to fawn after charismatic leaders, to revere physically attractive spokespersons, and fall for self-serving flimflam artists. If the exuberant crowd around us has been bowled over, we might also be drawn in. Good ole crowd psychology keeps us from pausing to ask ourselves, “What do I really think?”
Jesus also suggested in Luke 6 that actions are more revealing of a person’s heart than their words:
No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
Here, Jesus seems to assume that people will be wary of hypocrisy. If a person says one thing and does the opposite, they should not be trusted, even if large crowds are duped into following along.
Is the current era particularly polarized and divisive?
I suggest our time is typical and that people of the past demonized each other just as harshly, if not worse. Humans have never been adept at recognizing fallacious reasoning or argumentation. I know Mind in Heart readers are intelligent, but let’s take an extra minute to make sure we are all on the same page.
What is a fallacy? Webster says:
Fallacy, from the Latin word fallacia, means “to deceive” and is related to the etymology of fail, false, and fault.
A person using a fallacious argument may suffer from self-deception, not realizing that what they contend does not make logical sense. If aware of their fallacious reasoning, then they intend to deceive others.
To familiarize yourself with the many ways people argue illogically, check out this website among others.
One of the most common fallacious arguments is Argumentum Ad Hominem, attacking the person instead of countering their propositions. A politician, for example, in trying to better their opponent, may feel that logical reasoning is not effective. Instead, they might resort to disparaging the other’s appearance, claiming, for example, that the person has small hands, a big nose, or is in some way insufficiently human. Any attack on another’s race, creed, or color is along these lines.
Nineteenth-century America was full of horrendous polarization and hateful rhetoric. President Lincoln’s political opponents, for example, loved to deride his looks. Stanton called him “a gorilla.” McClellan called him “nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.”
By contrast, one of the reasons Lincoln can be ranked highest among excellent Presidents is how he responded to enemies wielding fallacious arguments. A family friend of Lincoln’s commented, “He used to say to me when I talked to him about Chase and those who did him evil—‘Do good to those who hate you and turn their ill will to friendship.’” Another friend said, “Mr. Lincoln was certainly a very poor hater.” His wife said his advice was, “We must never sell old friends to buy old enemies.”
This sounds like the way of Jesus, who commanded us to love our enemies.
As the Civil War finally ended, Lincoln famously responded to politicians who wanted to punish Southerners. They had argued against kind treatment of enemies. Lincoln said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
believing the good news
Doing everything Jesus taught is difficult for many reasons. For one thing, putting others before ourselves and being the servant of all goes against human nature. But I suspect that following him has enough benefits that if people try it they will appreciate it.
Probably, many people try to follow much of what Jesus taught without claiming to be a Christian. That might work. But he also might have understood how it isn’t easy when he said:
Blessed are they who are not offended by me.
Try to avoid feeling offended by Jesus when witnessing the failures of his followers.