FAITH IN SOCIETY
By Robert McMillan
Director of Pastoral Care, Capital City Chaplain Services
We have all heard the discussion about how God has been taken out of our culture. The discussion ranges from a general lack of Christian values in the world to an all out attack on the Church. Of course just recently we heard the annual “let’s put Christ back in Christmas.” There are the ongoing debates of faith in public life, attacks on the family, whether America is a Christian nation, and can religious symbols be put on public lands. As Baptists we spend over 12 million dollars a year in the effort to influence public attitudes and legislative decisions. But where has all of this gotten us?
Today, even in Baptist churches, we see that our numbers are falling. This is true among almost all of the churches around the world. So the question seems to be, why? Why is there animosity toward the church? Why are fewer people interested in attending a church as a part of their search for God? My opinion is, it is our fault. We, the Body of Christ, have failed miserably in our mission. Think about it for a minute. We have the greatest message, the most wonderful gift ever known to humankind, God’s grace and forgiveness. We can have a relationship with God both now and for eternity. Let’s be honest, how tough should it be to succeed with that message? Yet the reality is, we are failing.
I think it is because the focus of our message has gotten off track. Today, we are more concerned with non-essentials than we are with our core message. David Dockery the president of Union University, currently serving on the SBC’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, noted in a recent article “many aspects of Southern Baptist life have started to unravel because of years of ongoing controversy.” Today, the church is known more for what we are against than what we are for. We have become the primary source of guilt in the world, not the place of grace.
I do not think the world is out to get us, I do not believe that there is an outright attack against the church. To be quite honest, I do not think the world cares about the church at all. If there is an overall attitude about the church, about religion, it is one of indifference. The world does not care, and again I think it is our fault. Why? We are too inconsistent, almost schizophrenic in our message.
There are numerous examples of inconsistent messages. We speak out loudly against gays but almost totally ignore adultery among ourselves. There is a loud clamoring about gay marriage threatening the family, but if we are honest, the family was in trouble long before gays said a word about marriage. If you look at divorce rates among Christians, they are the same as the general population, even higher if you consider evangelicals. To the world, our message about gays is nothing more than a classic case of seeing the speck in someone else’s eye all the while ignoring the log in our own.
Another example is abortion. We stand against it saying that it is killing. But what is the church’s position on capital punishment? If we believe that taking a life is wrong, then it is wrong to take a life for any reason. When was the last time the church spoke out about all the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives that have been lost in the war on terror anyway? We get almost daily reports of “American” lives that have been lost, but not others. You mean God thinks only American lives matter? Not so. When I look at the example of Christ I see him speaking of the compassion of the Samaritan or taking time to talk with the woman at the well, another Samaritan, a group of people who for most Israelites were less than human. Jesus was constantly reaching out to the marginals, the outsider. As a matter of fact, the only group he ever attacked was church people.
I could go on and speak of the failed experiment of legislating morality. For many fundamentalists, the best situation would be a complete church control of laws that dictate people’s actions, but are quick to condemn the Islamic fundamentalists when they try to enforce Shiria law. There are numerous other examples of how the church’s message is contradictory, but I think you get the idea and I do not want to give the impression that I only want to point out all that is wrong. Instead, I want to offer an alternative.
I know that to talk about an attack on the church is popular, but that will get us nowhere. And to be quite honest, the only people who ever talk about an attack on the church are church people themselves. Out in the world I never hear that. As a matter of fact, I hear just the opposite. I work daily within what is usually considered one of the bastions of worldliness, yet not a day goes by that I do not have a series of deep discussions about faith or spirituality. Not a day goes by that someone does not ask for prayer, have a theological question, or comment on how much they appreciate that there is a chaplain available for them if the need should arise. The world is thirsty for what we have. The only question we must answer is, are we really serious about giving it to them or do we simply want to point out all that is wrong with them? Are we ready to engage them where they are, build a relationship and share with them how to walk with Jesus?
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