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Christianity has a bad reputation

Monday, October 11, 2010 View Comments Comments (0)

Christianity has a bad reputation in lots of places and in the thinking of a lot of people.  I’m not surprised, partially because bad news travels on wings but good news arrives on a limping donkey.  So, when some pastor misbehaves, it’s news.  When some preacher preaches hate, bigotry, and greed, it gets lots of attention.  When self-proclaimed Christians picket funerals or advertise that they are going to burn books that others think are holy, it gets a lot of attention.  If you form your understanding about Christianity based on what’s on the news, you get a pretty ugly picture. 

It doesn’t help that a lot of churches have very loudly reduced all of their time and energy to two issues – homosexuality and abortion.  From the outside, it must look like Christians spend most of their time thinking about sex and genitals!  It may come as a surprise to some that many Christians think that (a) sex isn’t always bad, dirty, forbidden, or sinful, and (b), there’s a whole lot more to being a follower of Jesus than being focused on the use, misuse, location, and treatment of genitals.  The way some people talk, you’d think they were something that the devil added after God finished creation and had turned the divine attention to some other project.

It seems to me that some issues are detrimental smoke screens that keep us from dealing with other important things.  Jesus was concerned with lots of issues, especially things like showing compassion, relieving suffering, and deflating people who were pompous and self-righteous.

How would you describe Christians from where you sit?

Mike Lamm


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