The Deaths of unChristian Christians

Do we defend Christian deaths over non-Christian deaths?

As in the people who profess Christianity (never mind their actions, so long as their "anti-" politics align with ours) are sacrosanct and not to be touched? We should value their lives (to be rescued, given refuge, grieved, held precious) over non-Christians?

There's an attitude of "well, when they target a Christian, they target all of us" in our thinking. Anyone who publically claims to be a Christian must and should be defended. Even if they don't show love. Even if they don't preach peace. Even if they're individually a rather repellent person who we wouldn't really want to have a beer with, or let babysit our kids. They're a Christian and therefore we have to be sad/angry/outraged that they're dead.

Are we angry because a "good Christian man" has died? Or are we scared because we think we're becoming targets?

Because there were Christians in Gaza too. Which has been bombed down to the bones. Many of the people in the US who've died through police or public violence in the last decade were Christians, or, at least, church-going. The fact that they didn't publically speak about their faith in ways that we can track on social media...well...are you going to apply that to your fellow churchgoers? Or only to the ones who you resonate with?

Was Kirk a "good Christian man" because he was a good Christian man, or was he a "good Christian man" because you see yourself in his life? Because you idolise the aggressive and argumentative style of "gospel" that embodies the Reformed Evanglicalism so prevalent in the modern western faith? Because you wish you were the kind of guy who argues with people a decade younger than you in such a way so that they lose their temper and you come out looking cool and authoritative? Because saying "the world needs Jesus" is easier than saying "maybe we need to treat people like they're essentially decent people"?

(This is where Calvinism becomes a stumbling block; because sin may make us untenable to God, but people need to be far less demanding when it comes to us simply being human among each other.)

Is it truly godly anger that drives us? Or just self-interested fear? I generally learn towards self-interested fear when it comes to humanity. 99.999999999% of us are not very godly. And the remaining miniscule percentage is not anyone on social media, because if you were more godly, you'd be somewhere else where there is no social media, giving your life to something other than outrage posting (or, indeed, social media posting at all, which is inherently performative and self-interested).

Ever noticed how it's mostly Christian men on social media, making posts? That's because their far more godly wives are out there doing the work and don't have the time for doing more than reading through their feed and liking pictures of places they haven't been (yet). And that is also probably why God kept me from being married.

And here's a thought. What about "bad Christian men" dying?

In the last few years, a number of Christians have died whose lives turned out to be rather less godly than Christians like to consider. Or their fruit was often rotten and worm-filled. Ravi Zacharias. James Dobson. Charlie Kirk. Just to name a few.

There's a lot of "well, they were a Christian, so the evil they did didn't matter", and a lot of "well, they did evil, so they can't have been a Christian". And in the midst of it, I've found a new strain of thought burgeoning: that we hope they found a God in His heaven who was beyond their limited comprehension of Him on Earth, and that they understand the bindings they put on others in being able to meet God, and that they understand what they have done.

they can tak' our media but they'll never tak' our freeeedooooom!

There's a growing theme among Australian Christians, that our society is 'being taken from us'.

It manifests in the increasing attitudes of "well, you can't say anything godly at all anymore without someone coming in to cancel you". It manifests in the persisting belief that "Australia is a Christian nation (or at least a nation founded on Christian values) and we should keep it that way." It manifests in the insistence that "well, we've seen how feminism and wokeness and the modern sexuality has destroyed our society, so why don't we take it back to the old (Christian) ways?"

There's a desire for a simplistic narrative - a 'back to the basics' attitude. These are mostly voiced by older people, white guys, and people who haven't studied history, or use the term 'woke' as a pejorative.

There's also an exaggeration happening around Christian thought. Christians are increasingly using dramatic language to describe the response to the mores and morality expressions of our faith. It's also interesting that the Christians using dramatic language are frequently more invested in the morality expressions of our faith that are contradictory to those of the world - setting up worldly perspectives as an antagonist, rather than coming alongside them as a friend.

Possibly ironically, Sam Chan's Evangelism in a Modern World addresses the matter of coming alongside worldly perspectives as a friend to the person - not necessarily agreeing, but pushing our friends to think further and deeper about what they really believe.

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Listening to Majority 54 Podcast the other week - the episode release on the 21st April entitled Political Therapy with a conversation with an author, Monica Guzman whose book I Never Thought Of It That Way. The conversation was around a willingness to listen and understand where people are coming from. Ravi was talking about his older brother and how his older brother seems to have no interest in anything Ravi is doing or Ravi's thoughts on anything, and that he feels that sting quite keenly. Then, recently, he learned that his older brother feels like he already knows everything he needs to about his brother because their mom boasts about Ravi and what he's doing all the time.

One of the points that Monica made was that conservatives feel hemmed in by the media, there's nowhere that promotes a 'Christian perspective' anymore and that gets them on the back foot. They have no interest in the specific stories of individuals - liberals, progressives, non-Christians - because they already feel like they know it all and so they don't need to be told.

From a liberal vs conservative POV, without any faith in the mix, I can see that conservatives would be angry and defensive and just prefer to lump all liberals and progressives in together without seeing them individually: and yes, understanding where the specific person you love is coming from is one thing, thinking you understand where "liberals and progressives" are coming from is entirely another.

From a Christian perspective, though, I feel like Christians should be better listeners; better at tailoring our message and our interactions with the specific individual that we're trying to reach. Not just issuing a "TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN" notice.

I feel like this is what Sam Chan is getting at regarding how to evangelise, although the cynic in me would have called it "How to Evangelise When You Already Think You Know Everything You Need To Know". Hm. I wonder if I could write a book about that...

why we don't have room for anything they'd recognise as 'love'

There was a conversation over at MF's FB over the statement: "the church should be famous for its love".

And I noted

Where too often "LOVE" is translated a "you're dirty and awful and nasty and should be glad that the God of heaven cares for you (through the [self-]righteous mouthings of his people)..."

I've been wondering the last couple of years that maybe most of us Christians don't actually believe "in Christ alone". There's always a "and you must" clause.

"And you must prioritise the unborn, the nuclear family, the legality of the gospel, the rights of Christians and the church, the moral Christianising of the law, and your life must look like an western middle-class aspirational life...

Do all this in the name of Jesus Christ and you will surely inherit the kingdom of God!"

The bit that I didn't add was:

I am starting to wonder if it's a by-product "fear of losing their salvation by too-close association with The World"? Even (especially?) in certain Christian circles (*coughs*SydneyEvangelicalism*cough*), the implications have persisted that if you follow the "wrong" path on opinions of everything from homosexuality to abortion to transgenderism then your very salvation is imperilled. And yet at the same time, the leaders attempt to reassure me that "my hope is built on nothing less..."

If my salvation is in Christ's hands alone - if nothing I can do or think other than repudiation of His gift of grace will keep me from the love of God (in Jesus Christ) - then I have no fear of walking out into The World and dispensing the love and support that God has graced me with no matter to whom, or even whether it enables further sinfulness in those I love in my actions. His grace is sufficient for me, and also for them, and I trust in that as I witness to others in ways that 'The Church' may not generally approve.

However, if I feel like my salvation (and, indeed, my church acceptance) is based on my reputation within the church, on the way I vote, on my policy opinions regarding hotbutton culture topics, on my association with the right kind of people in a world of sinners...then, yes, I will not just reject the worldview of the world, but reject the people of the world because they represent my likely rivening from the grace of God.

utterly and totestally perssikuted

There's a persisting irony in the, shall we say, religiosity with which we cling to our "WE BE UTTERLY AND TOTESTALLY PERSSIKUTED" cross.

It is only equalled by the insistent demand that news sites treat us with respect and dignity and in a positive light all the time.

Logic, peoples! If we're being persecuted for our faith, then part of that is going to involve the reported news (which is the world's perspective) about us being negative.

Additionally, the church (broadly speaking) hasn't done any particularly standout works worth reporting on. Large-scale advocation for refugees? Nope. Large-scale advocation for social support? Nope. Large-scale advocation for mental (and spiritual) health? Nope.

The three large-scale advocations that I can think of - for the Sydney Anglican diocese, which is hierarchically led (so a single speaking voice from the top) and biblically based - have been:
1. against gay marriage ($1m put towards the 'No' campaign for marriage equality; the archbishop's statement that gay ministers who want to be married should just leave the Anglican umbrella),
2. for the 'Religious Freedom/Religious Discrimination Bill' that allows organisations to hire and fire people in line with their core beliefs
3. for Religious Education in Schools (my church was personally encouraged to send a positive postcard to our local member about it, and I think the encouragement came from the diocese leadership.

Question: do these things benefit anyone other than the church and the church community?

Like, are we advocating on behalf of the ordinary people around us? Or are we advocating solely with an element of self-interest?

And if we're not advocating on behalf of broader society, rather than in our own self-interest, then how are we being any different to any other self-interested, non-Jesus-led organisation out there in society?

"But the gospel needs--"

Whoa, there, Nelly! Hold it right there. The gospel doesn't need us. God doesn't need us. He graciously allows us to be involved. But he doesn't need us.

"If every voice was still, the rocks themselves would cry out." ~ Jesus ~

What have Christians done for others lately? As a whole, not in the charitable arms, and the small groups that do their work on the sides. Those are good things to do - no doubt about it - but they're also out of sight, out of mind. SHould they be? No. But that's not the way that 'news' works: so far as broader society think - and so far as Christians seem intent on repeating - the only thing we have is TO TELL THE GOSPEL. Which is fine, but we really need to be using actions before we use words. And in hierarchical organisations (such as the Anglican dioceses), they need to come from the top, big and showy and positive - so far as the world is concerned.

And if they're not big and showy and positive as far as the world is concerned, then they're going to be scornful and negative, because that's all they see from Christians. And whining about it doesn't make it any better; an attitude of "they should appreciate us because we're nice people!" Not when the 'nice people' who are like us have treated them badly - individually, collectivally, societally - and aren't willing to take a stand on something that matters to them.

Basically, maybe they don't report anything positive about Christians, because - from their view at least - there is no positive about Christians.

it doesn't have to be about us

One word: Afghanistan.

So much turmoil and trouble and grief and guilt and pain and suffering.

And a hefty dose of misinformation and drama running around as well. For which I wrote this post and actually put it up on FB.

In the midst of the takeover of Afghanistan, there are undoubtedly churches and Christians at risk, and Christian groups in the west are going to be praying for them.

However, please be wary of reposting every alleged atrocity that crosses your dashboard.

eg. a post came to light on one of the groups I’m in, where the missionary Judith Carmona in the city of Chihuahua in Africa reports that 229 Christian missionaries are about to be brutally executed by Afghan Taliban in the city of Quaragosh. The post exhorted Christians to provide ‘prayer cover’ for them.

Chihuahua City is in Mexico, not Africa. The city of Qaraqosh is in Iraq, not Afghanistan. And 229 Christian missionaries – most likely from Western countries – are being executed by the Taliban and not a scrap of media attention being paid to it?

(“Oh, but Sel, the western media hates Christians. Why, they’d watch us all slaughtered in the blink of an eye and never so much as make a peep!”)

If you google "judith carmona missionaries" and limit the results to before mid-last year, the first result on the page is a data scrape website that dates back to 2018. Other reports indicate that Ms Carmona and her missionaries actually first appeared in dire need of prayer cover back in 2009.

Basically, Judith Carmona's 229 Christian missionaries have been waiting in anticipatory terror of their beheading for at least three years, possibly up to twelve years, now. If they died, either in 2009 or in 2018, possibly both, then they have clearly been resurrected through the power of the risen Lord!!!!! ...and transported once again to a place where there is unrest and trouble in the Islamic world, that you and everyone who sees this rebirthed story may fire up their outrage against Muslims, Islam, and the primitive tribal peoples of that area who don't know the proper kind of civilisation and politeness that we in the west are party to.

But, taking the sarcasm font away...

Seriously. We are Christians, we should value the truth. So fact-check before reposting stuff like Judith Carmona and the 229 missionaries.

And don't come at me with, "But there are other atrocities happening to Christians even now!" Have I denied that there are?

But also be aware: this isn't Christian-specific persecution: this is a generic 'anyone who stands against the Taliban' persecution. Christians will absolutely and undoubtedly fall under this category, but it's not as though non-Christians will be untouched.

So let's also be wary of making out that this is "Christian persecution", because it's more than that. There is persecution because people are Christians, absolutely, but there's also persecution because people worked with the allied forces, or because women behave like they should have the same rights as men, or because journalists might report things that the Taliban doesn’t want shown, or because communities aren't as obedient to the teachings of the Koran as the Taliban thinks they should be.

Frankly, it’s not ‘Christian persecution’ so much as ‘anyone who isn’t 100% “Taliban YAY” persecution’.

So let’s pray, fellow Christians, by all means, but let’s also not make it all about us, mhmm?

I have no idea how it's going to be taken among my conservative FB church friends. But I did preface it with: "Buckle up. This gets grumpy."