Hard yet important questions of faith don’t often surface where they should. In fact, church buildings often provide the safest rooms for elephants to gather incognito.
Ignoring such questions, however, does not serve individuals, congregations, society or what Jesus called the kingdom of God well. Such questions deserve consideration.
Why do Americanized Christians so eagerly embrace ideologies that contrast with Jesus’ life and teachings?
Why would a Christian expect to be privileged and be willing to accept cruelty toward others — when Jesus taught the very opposite?
Why would a professing Christian be so easily driven by fear and falsehoods — when Jesus taught his followers to “fear not” and that truth sets one free?
While making no claims of a definitive answer, here are some likely clues.
Of course, those who most need to give them consideration likely will not. Quick defensiveness marks such ideologies.
These four factors are clearly at play as those longed stewed in the rituals of Americanized Christianity disregard the life and teachings of Jesus in favor of a political identification that offers a sense of superiority and elevates their interests over others.
One: Cheap versions of salvation create escape artists not transformed disciples.
The biblical concept of salvation conveys a sense of wholeness resulting from ongoing transformation. It is more than saying a prayer and signing a card.
Transactional, instantaneous acts of “getting saved” by “accepting Jesus” are more modern constructs of revival movements. They ignore the primary calling of Jesus to deny oneself, take up a cross and follow him.
Sensing one already has sealed the deal for an eternal residency allows for ignoring Jesus and seeking the earthly goods offered by the profiting prophets of self-interest.
Often this scaled-to-size salvation leads to misusing the terms “biblical” and “Christian” — in the same way slaveholders did — to justify attitudes and actions at odds with Jesus.
Two: Charity has been taught at the expense of justice.
Perhaps the single most addressed topic in the Bible — at least a clear thread that runs throughout — is the call for justice. It is what the law required, the prophets exposed, and Jesus commanded.
Yet, generally, justice did not and does not get its due in our church teachings and preachings. In its stead, charity is taught — giving a bit to help others in a way that makes one feel good.
This is at the root of what I’ve called “shoebox Christianity” in which church members love to fill well-decorated shoeboxes with trinkets to be sent to faraway children who really need refuge. But that is more than the shoebox fillers care to give.
While charitable giving is good and needed, the Bible calls for a willingness to share power and resources. Almost entirely lost in today’s religious-political ideology — embraced by so many professing Christians — is basic concern for the common good of shared humanity.
Justice does not pour down like a mighty river. It dribbles a bit within Americanized Christianity that largely ignores Jesus’ two-fold commandment, clearly identified as the greatest, to love God with all one’s being and one’s inclusively-defined neighbor as oneself.
Three: Gullibility reigns over discernment.
Tragically amazing is how so many professing Christians are easily manipulated by manufactured fear and drawn in by promises of security in exchange for loyalty. Truth has become nothing more than what one wants to hear.
The whole spiritual discipline of discernment has been tossed aside in favor of whatever massages one’s fragile sense of identity and security.
The nearly wholesale embrace of conspiracies and outright falsehoods by Americanized Christians is simply alarming. Comfort is preferred over truth.
Four: Nationalistic allegiances and religious commitments are all mixed up.
Misguided patriotism rooted in (white) American exceptionalism has created a sense of arrogance and privilege that has long led to the exploitation of others.
Rather than a spiritual commitment to following Jesus faithfully, much of Americanized Christianity is a civil religion mixture that serves neither civics nor religion well.
We see within individuals we have long considered as brothers and sisters in Christ and churches we embraced as our spiritual homes the dangerous rise in Christian nationalism — wholly similar to that which allowed Nazism to accomplish its evil goals.
Until we can separate a primary commitment to following Jesus from a penultimate commitment to healthy patriotism this danger will persist.
Surely there are other factors at play. But at least these four are found at the root of what leads so many professing Christians to give their loyalty to temporal, contrasting causes rather than to following Jesus.
But the invitation — Jesus’ invitation — remains open.
John D. Pierce is director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative (jesusworldview.org), part of Belmont University’s Rev. Charlie Curb Center for Faith Leadership. Join us for the first Jesus Worldview Conference, October 13-15, in Nashville.