Indefensible Christianity

I've given up on a writing project that had been percolating for over a decade. The working title was Understanding Your Christian Friend. My intent was to respond to the misunderstanding about Christain faith and its adherents in the light of what appears to be an increasingly hostile anti-Christian sentiment in my country. 

I can't claim any "minority" status. I am a white Christian heterosexual middle-class American male. However, I have voluntarily associated myself with groups that have been subject to "anti-isms" that cause me to be judged by the company I keep. I can't claim to know what it is like to daily live out life marked by my gender or race or disability shadowing my access to jobs, housing, or basic dignity, but I have been bitten by the pain of being lumped in with prejudices. Most imminently this has been my status as a police officer. Despite every evidence of the dedication of my colleagues, those who have anti-police bias have been fed the steady diet of raw meat crowdsourcing their fear and hatred.  

Because I was very outspoken and had a moderately high public profile in the months after Ferguson, I was subjected to vile emails, comments, and tweets by people who knew nothing about my personal life and conduct. I was particularly struck by a comment made during a debate between me, a black attorney, and another professor on an NPR radio station. The attorney acknowledged that there are many good police officers, and it was all I could do to refrain from reminding him that I often heard that as the racist's ultimate moral defense - "oh sure, there are some fine negroes - I have a black friend who is a credit to his race."

Now we return to the subject of Christianity, the other group I have voluntarily associated with and live with the umbrella of criticism under which the American church dwells. Those who acknowledge the good Christian fellow they know can sustain their bias by being certain that person is the exception to the rule. What pains me deeply is that they may be quite right.

Cultural Christianity is indefensible. Marginal Christianity is indefensible. My own attempts to be a "good Christian" are often indefensible. In the final analysis, my attempt to defend the church by somehow reconciling it to normalcy in our contemporary culture is indefensible. I'm not Christ-like enough to even merit the scorn and persecution that Jesus himself faced.  It is the most basic of Biblical doctrine that each of us is indefensible. 

I'm on track to read the Bible through a couple of times this year, and I am struck by the fact that the bulk of the account of the Hebrew people - God's flock chosen to bring Truth to humanity - are constantly, constantly, constantly straying. Failure after failure, second, third, and fourth chances at living right mucked up by rebellion, lust, and hypocrisy. God's prophets told generation after generation that God hated their offerings, hated their sacrifices because they were empty efforts to easily placate God while their hearts were quite satisfied with their sinfulness.

Jesus spoke against that same hypocrisy of the religious elite who served the very temple where the spirit of God was said to dwell. When the crowds who followed him grew because he fed them rather than to hear the Truth he spoke, he confronted them for their shallowness. He often chastised his closest followers and lamented how long he had put up with their lack of belief. All of the Apostle Paul's writings - the bulk of our New Testament - was aimed at churches and individuals to try to keep them on track with their doctrine and behavior. Even the book of Revelation begins with letters to the churches of the day (and meant for us today as well) and their faults. 

So, I give up. I can't defend the hypocrisy, the emptiness, the failure of churches and individuals who claim to be followers of Jesus. All I can do is to say that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Our basic human problem is sin and rebellion against God - believer and non-believer alike. That separation from God that we all suffer cannot be repaired by our own goodness or acts of charity or deprivation. It can only be repaired by God himself.

I am indefensible. The earthly judge,  Pilate, declared a truth that remains today. He said, "I find no fault in him." I'll never be found worthy by anyone in this world. That's why I depend on the only worthy one who ever lived, and on his grace and forgiveness.