Awful people who are privately Christian.

I originally wrote this piece in 2017, and titled it “Christians in private, but reprobate in public.” I had to update it a bunch ’cause I have some new thoughts on the matter.

Back when I first wrote on the topic, a few correspondents were surprised by the very idea of people who were publicly jerks, but nonetheless identify as Christian. Since then, they’ve finally recognized plenty of examples of the phenomenon. Celebrities who act like divas and brats and unholy rage monsters, but if anyone dares to say anything they consider blasphemous, they instantly object ’cause they’re Christian all of a sudden. Or if you ask them about religion, they’ll claim they love Jesus. Or when they’re accepting Grammy awards for singing about promiscuous nooky, first they wanna give a shout-out to their “Lord and savior Jesus Christ,” whom you’d never imagine they follow, considering their lifestyles. They don’t publicly follow him any, but they’re huge fans. Huge.

Particular stand-outs are those politicians who love to argue, and slander their counterparts in the opposition party, and say vicious things to anyone who gives them pushback. And sometimes they have vile things to say about immigrants, minorities, people of other states, fans of other football teams, or anyone who just rubs ’em the wrong way. And considering how often you see ’em on the Sunday morning chat shows, it’s unlikely they’re ever at church. But whenever they gotta claim Jesus to score some political points, and maybe get some Christian votes, they’ll loudly and proudly claim they’re Christian. Still, you’d never have guessed so by their fleshly behavior.

I have coworkers who are this way. They’ll talk about all the drinking and smoking and fornicating they plan to do over the weekend. They’re unethical. They’re filled with fear, hatred, and anger. They get envious, jealous, and partisan. Try to pick fights; try to cause division; try to create enemies. Y’know, stuff which indicates they’re not gonna inherit God’s kingdom. Ga 5.19-21 But if one of our athiest coworkers dares to condemn Christianity, suddenly they wanna fight ’em on behalf of the Jesus they never actually follow.

That, I will regularly point out to people, is the world we live in today. People who clearly don’t know and don’t follow Jesus, yet think they’re one of his.

I could blame it on decades of Evangelicals insisting they’re not religious, ’cause Christianity is a relationship not a religion. They’re entirely right about not being religious, but entirely wrong about Christianity not being a religion. As I’ve often said, if we don’t get religious about our relationships with Jesus, that relationship’s gonna suck.

I could blame it on the fact that, because they’re not religious, they rarely pray, they never go to church, never read their bibles, and have no idea what Jesus teaches. Or that they even need to follow him. They figure they said the sinner’s prayer as children, and once saved always saved, so actually obeying God might imply they don’t trust their faith to save them. Hence their utter lack of good works and good fruit.

If we call them on this, half the time they’ll object to us even judging them; the one bit of bible they do know is “Judge not,” even though they don’t truly know what Jesus means by it. The rest of the time they’ll shrug: Why are we so worried about their sins? They said the sinner’s prayer; they go to confession; they’re forgiven, so they’re good! Piss off.

They think they belong to Jesus. Do they? Maybe; maybe not. God is way more gracious than I am, and he might let ’em into his kingdom regardless. But the apostles do say those who produce fleshly works like they do are not getting into God’s kingdom, and Jesus himself says plenty will claim to be his at the End, but he doesn’t know ’em. Seems we’ve met these people.

Whether we should say they’re not Christian.

What provoked my original article was a piece by Dr. Benjamin L. Corey, in which he stated there are two kinds of Christian: A member of the religion, and an active follower of Christ. To Corey, the inert “members” aren’t legitimately Christian. Because Christianity should be observable behavior, and if you can’t see it, ’tain’t there.

There, I largely agree. Where he lost me was when he took this view.

Case in point: Franklin Graham. The other day I stated that he was not Christian (in response to his anti-immigrant/anti-refugee beliefs), and of course, I immediately got the expected push-back to such a statement.

“How do you really know?” (Implication: how do you know his heart? How do you know he hasn’t “accepted Christ into his heart?”)

Or, of course, some will ask rightly, “is it your job to decide who is or is not a Christian?”

Since Christian has come to mean something different in Americanized Christianity, these objections are totally valid. Since we are operating in a culture where Christian is a noun, and where anyone can secretly be one regardless of what they think about what Jesus said, I don’t know who is that type of Christian and who isn’t. Certainly I don’t know if Franklin Graham has ever asked Jesus into his heart, though I would bank on the fact that he has. Neither is it my place to declare who is part of the Christian religion or not—there’s ultimately 40,000 versions of that and I am not the gate keeper for any of them, let alone all 40,000.

But to me, there are only two types of Christian, and the second one—an adjective instead of a noun, is observable. It doesn’t require the ability to judge the individual heart. It is not something that can only be done by a gate-keeper as if they have any power anyway. It is simply the act of returning Christian to an adjective, and being honest in that it does not apply to people [who] don’t want to do what Jesus said to do.

—Corey, “There’s only two types of ‘Christian’ (and you should be able to tell the difference),” 2/14/2017.

If by “Christian” we mean “someone who overtly follows Jesus in deed as well as word,” well yeah—heavily overpaid evangelist Franklin Graham has some problems when it comes to qualifying. He does a lot of great things for the needy. But he’s really, really awful to people he considers sinners. (And Democrats, ’cause he considers ’em sinners.)

And honestly, all of us suck, to one degree or another, at following Jesus. So… which of our sins breaks the Savior’s back?

Graham is stridently anti-Muslim. He doesn’t merely believe Islam is incorrect (same as every Christian obviously will); he believes Muslim immigrants and refugees should be turned away from the United States, for they’re nothing but ruinous to our way of life. It’s religious bigotry, and a lot of Christians think it’s the only valid form of bigotry they get to practice… so they do.

But this behavior is inconsistent with grace and God’s kingdom. In certain Muslim homelands, evangelism gets us Christians beheaded. That’s why our missionaries regularly chicken out and won’t go there. Muslims coming here is a huge opportunity for us to share the gospel with them! We get to introduce ’em to Jesus with no fear of religious persecution. Same as the Germans successfully did with Syrian refugees. Keep ’em out because they’re non-Christian? Good thing God never held this view about gentiles!

But does Graham’s Islamophobia kick him out of the kingdom? I doubt it. So I won’t go there. Corey will, ’cause to him Graham’s prejudice and politics are dealbreakers.

And Corey’s absolutely right about his central point: “Christian” is defined by whether we follow Jesus. Not whether we declare allegiance to him, or a church, or whether our very favorite book is the bible, with The Art of the Deal a close second. If we don’t follow Jesus, we’re not Christian. And if we only follow Jesus in private, and people have no further evidence we’re Christian other than our word… well, we’ve given them an awful lot to doubt.

And maybe they’re really not Christian.

Let’s say the courts could legally determine whether someone’s Christian. (They can’t, and absolutely shouldn’t, but let’s just say.) Let’s say we were trying to convince a jury someone’s Christian. I’m pretty sure a lot of the folks I’ve been talking about, wouldn’t convince a single juror.

Because again: Christianity is defined by whom we follow, not what we believe. It’s not about having all our doctrine straight, though we certainly oughta work on that. It’s about whether our beliefs about Jesus affect how we live our lives, and what we do for others. Now that God has graciously saved us, he has good works for us to do. Ep 2.8-19 So if we do nothing… we got nothing.

1 John 2.3-6 ESV

3And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Those who try to maintain the outward appearance of Christianity without actually following Jesus—i.e. Christianists—flagrantly don’t keep Jesus’s commands. I’m not even talking about hypocrites, who pretend to follow Jesus but secretly don’t: I’m talking about unashamed sinners, who have excuses for their every misdeed, who nonetheless figure they’re still in God’s kingdom because cheap grace guarantees ’em a spot. The sort of jerks who assume, “I said the sinner’s prayer, so God owes me heaven,” yet their every behavior indicates not only are they unsuitable for heaven, they’re not even trying. It’s like there’s no Holy Spirit in them at all, and never was.

So why do we keep giving them the benefit of the doubt? Why do some of us even demand we give all of them the benefit of the doubt?

Speaking for myself: Most of the time I’m encouraged to give politicos the benefit of the doubt. If they’re members of our political party, take ’em at their word; they’re Christian! Partisanship covers a multitude of sins.

Well, unless they’re in the opposition party. Then nobody gets the benefit of the doubt. Not even ordained pastors. If they don’t share our political views, they’re going to hell. If they vote our way, forgive them all their unrepentant, reprobate behavior; reject every report of their outrageous acts as “fake news.” If they don’t, believe every evil rumor, including stuff from obvious fake-news outlets, ’cause you already believe they’re headed for hell.

Is there a line they might cross where I’ll stop calling such folks Christian? Sure. When they blatantly quit Jesus. When they’re obvious apostates. When they say, “I know what Jesus said, but screw that; we live in the real world.” Sometimes I’ll just call ’em heretic, but when their heresy takes ’em entirely off the reservation, okay, they’re not even Christian. But most Christianists go out of their way to never say anything bad about Jesus, ’cause they know that’s beyond the pale. Instead they just stick to godless actions and cheap grace.

And y’know, I’ve been there. Back in my hypocrite days, I stuck to godless actions and cheap grace. But I still had a relationship with Jesus. It’s why he grabbed me by the ear and dragged me away from that behavior. It’s why I figure he can likewise pull them out of that. I’m not being gracious to Christianists out of blind optimism. It’s out of experience. They may be awful people, but if they really do know Jesus somehow, he’s not gonna let ’em stay that way.