5 Things Christianity Isn’t About
1. Christianity isn’t about believing things for no reason.
American Christians have a pernicious tendency to characterize faith as belief without evidence or reason. Of course Christian faith isn’t about believing things without evidence or reason. If it were, Christians would be mad – pitiful, dangerous, and incurable. Christian faith is about trusting God. It’s about believing His Word. It’s about living out His commandments. And there are good reasons for trusting God and believing His Word and living out His commandments.
2. Christianity isn’t about politics.
Christianity Isn't About This
Christian faith is relevant to politics; Christian faith ought to inform all our political decisions; nevertheless, Christian faith is not about politics. There is no such thing as a Christian ballot. The unhealthy marriage of Christianity and politics has resulted in the identification of Christianity with specific economic and diplomatic agendas. In turn, arguments against these “Christian” agendas are perceived as arguments against Christianity itself. The whole cycle is destructive of a truly Christian approach to political questions.
3. Christianity isn’t about culture.
Going to church is a fantastic thing for Christians to do. But Christianity isn’t about going to church. Christianity especially isn’t about going to church in order to placate one’s family or expand one’s friend group or make business connections. Christianity isn’t about coffee hour. Christianity isn’t about contemporary worship or traditional liturgy. Christianity isn’t about having a white suburban family. Christianity isn’t about brunch.
4. Christianity isn’t about ‘family values’.
Perhaps there are distinctly Christian perspectives on abortion, homosexuality, and fornication. But the implications of a worldview for practical ethics are not to be confused with the worldview itself. When we represent ‘family values’ as the heart of our faith, we lose sight of the life-changing power of the gospel of God. No one was ever converted by a lecture on family values. Paradoxically, by driving people away from the Church via our constant ‘family values’ rhetoric, we actually prevent them from trusting in Christ, the only One powerful enough to transform hearts and create healthy families.
5. Christianity isn’t about getting rich.
That it has been represented as such is one of the most abject, humiliating, and ridiculous heresies ever to slither its way into the history of the Church.
Christianity is about Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel, the culmination of God’s saving plan for the world. Christianity is about the redemption of mankind through the blood of a perfect sacrifice and the ushering in of a perfect new creation in the Church. Christianity is about love and passion and sacrifice; light and salt and hope; the weight of glory. Christianity is about falling at the foot of the cross in reverence and complete submission. We allow our eyes to drift from the man hanging there at our own peril.
