Apparently, I Am No Longer a (Good) Christian

I just learned that I’m not a “true believer,” not a real “Christian.” On August 12, 2020, a leading pastor from the subculture in which I was reared said those who don’t vote for his presidential candidate couldn’t be Christian. Apparently, allegiance to his candidate (and not Jesus) is the litmus test for my faith, which means I have lost my eternal citizenship in heaven—or never had it.

I’ve spent the last week pondering my defection. In retrospect, it makes sense that one man could make this call for me. Many of the pastors of my youth looked up to this megachurch preacher. They quoted from his writing and collected audio copies of his sermons. I do not doubt that most of the ministers who spoke at my Christian churches, Christian schools, Christian camps, and Christian college would agree I’ve lost my way. But I didn’t get lost on purpose. If anything, they led me from the straight-and-narrow path.

Christian Racism

I grew up in a denomination that had split over the practice of slavery. To be fair, the issue had to be addressed because some were apparently asking slaves before they were submerged in baptismal waters to affirm that freedom in Christ didn’t mean that they deserved to be free citizens. Christians from my childhood church who banded together to march against the murder of unborn babies now chastise people who march against the murder of unarmed black men and women. Abortion wasn’t “just a sin issue.”  But racism is. Abortion was a system to be challenged, but racism isn’t.

Christian Isolationism

In the seventh grade, with men from my church, I visited a Mexican prison to hand out Bibles to inmates. I was made to feel rightfully sympathetic to their plight and for the poverty in the towns we visited. Many of my denominations’ pastors have encouraged the ministry of Central American missions trips but now don’t want to show compassion to those same souls at our southern border. In their mind, good Christians should send money to boots on the ground in other countries but shouldn’t let them be part of our economy. I was thoroughly taught that capitalism was part of God’s preferred way for the world to be run but am now told that we can’t trust immigrants to share our free market.

Christian Xenophobia

I was taught by Christians every Christmas that Mary and Joseph fled with baby Jesus from an impoverished area of their beloved homeland to another country for safety—that an angel from God the father commanded it. The parishioners in those shared churches now tell me that other refugees and asylum seekers are only thieves and criminals and freeloaders.

Christian Destiny

Dozens of the 5,000 sermons, Bible classes, and devotionals I endured during that era of my life claimed that promises to Israel applied to America. In a Christian school, I was taught a history of the United States that implied or even overtly claimed that God breathed our country as a chosen nation, that he blessed our Manifest Destiny—with its genocide of indigenous people and enslavement of fellow holders of his divine image. The new Promised Land just unfortunately led to casualties of those in the way of American exceptionalism.

Christian Idealism

I was told the only Bible good Christians could read was the divinely re-inspired and unchanged “1611 King James.” Any updates in Scripture translations were declared heresy. Then I attended a college with a Bible museum that actually included original 1611 volumes—which read a lot different than the holy books my teachers and pastors quoted. That was because they all read a version that had been revised multiple times until a determined stopping point more than 150 years later.

Christian Sexism

At that same Christian college, my ethics professor taught us that the only women who got pregnant from rape were the ones who liked the forceful sex. We weren’t offered anything in regards to sex or ethics from a woman’s perspective, because women were not allowed to teach any male older than middle school boys anything that could be considered biblical content—at that college or at any church I had attended to that point.

Christian Exclusivism

At that same college, the dean of my department told me to my face that the institution had no intent for us to work in a secular workforce—that the highest and best use of our skills was improving the writing and design of ministries within our religious sect. They didn’t intend for us to live as lights in the American marketplace. The advertising industry was too dark a world for Christians to make their home there.

Christian Political Power

My alma mater was founded by graduates of a university that got into a legal battle in the 1970s over their racist segregation policies. Fighting to regain its tax-exempt status, it somehow got affiliated with another Christian university president and religious broadcasters in what became a political movement. They covered their racist origin by choosing abortion as their banner issue. Later, one of those broadcasters tried to convince the world his political candidate was a “baby Christian,” even though the presidential hopeful proudly declared that he’d never repented of anything in his life.

Christian Consistency

During those college years, I watched religious leaders join the pitchforked throng who used a President’s sexual sins as a reason he was unfit for office—for being unpresidential. Those same voices now excuse a President accused of cheating on his third wife with a porn actress, shrugging. “I don’t need my President to be my pastor.” In an interview after speaking at his party’s convention, a clergyman stated that a former Presidential candidate was responsible for her husband’s affairs but that his candidate’s multiple affairs didn’t disqualify him.

Christian Conspiracy

I reconnected with one of my Christian elementary teachers a few years ago. She made a point to tell me that the women who accused her party’s leaders of sexual assault were all lying, all making stories up for political use. But she believed all the accusers of a president in another political party. She failed to notice that women didn’t make accusations against either party’s candidates during the previous four Presidential election cycles.

Christian Felonies

Multiple pastors of my youth railed against the sexual ethics of people outside the church. But hundreds of the pastors of our denomination sexually abused women and teen girls. Many then used Scripture out of context to scare the victims into secrecy. One of my friends’ pastors would sexually assault a teen parishioner in his office right before a church service and then go out into the pulpit to rain hellfire and brimstone on topics like immorality. One of these predators called my wife’s Chinese-symbol tattoo the mark of a whore—after cheating on his wife with someone younger than his kids and sexually molesting an eighth-grader in his congregation.

Christian Nation

The Christian culture in which I was reared used Jesus for what it wanted and discarded the rest.

It leveraged verses and passages convenient to their agenda and ignored the ones that condemned their philosophy. The Jesus I was taught for more than two decades of my life was wrapped in an American flag. He belonged only to one party. He was wiling to hold his nose and make needful political partnerships. I was admonished to pray for all of our Presidents but prayers of blessing over only the ones from one political party. I was told and retold that my country was started as a place of religious freedom but that now that freedom should be given boundaries so we can be a “Christian nation.”

Christian Label

Interestingly enough, Jesus never called his followers “Christians.”

The word “Christian” originated as a slur. Early followers of Jesus were called “little Christs” in pejorative condescension. Through rampant hypocrisy, selective obedience, and political maneuvering, “Christian” is again a pejorative title—this time in the American culture.

Christians are easily-offended whiners who as the majority culture somehow feel persecuted. Christians care about your unborn baby but not enough to adopt or foster the child you keep. Christians believe in civil disobedience for the causes they support but condemn that of people of other causes. Christians have famously banded together to pay for the legal defense of alt-right murderers, including the men who hunted down Ahmad Arberry and killed him on video. Christians have celebrated the closing of borders, including to Christian refugees from Muslim-governed countries. Christians have criticized the legitimacy of the #metoo and #churchtoo movements. Christians have told fellow citizens outside their faith that our democratic republic should be governed by boundaries from their holy book. And Christians have aligned themselves with angry, hateful, salacious, and unrepetant heathens to regain their former status quo. Their degenerate hero has claimed to have done more for Christians than any previous President (including the revered founders who wrote amendments that protect religious liberty). His son has declared that their figurehead has “literally saved Christianity.”

If that is what a Christian is and does, then I am most certainly not a good one. By that definition, I’d hope I wouldn’t even be considered a Christian at all.

“Christian” Real Hope

Please know, I’m not walking away from my faith in Christ.

I still believe that Jesus and his church are the hope of the world—not just my country, all nations. I’m not going to abandon my pursuit of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I’m not going to quit trying to be more like him and to exemplify more each day the fruit of his spirit. I’m just not keen to identify myself as a Christian, because that word apparently now means a lot of things opposite to what it originally did.

I don’t think your ballot determines your relationship with Jesus or your standing with him. True believers I love are pulling different levers at their polling places. Our votes don’t thwart God’s plan on this earth, but our primary allegiances can impact the reception of the Gospel. I’m choosing kingdom over country and especially over party this November 3—whether you call me a Christian or not.

—

Stock image purchased from iStockPhoto.com