This has not been one of those periods in life which has allowed much time for reflective reading. Still, there are moments in the middle of the night when I am up with Su that allow me to grab the occasional glance at a few things that I have wanted/intended/hoped to read.
In one of those moments this week I read an article by Audrey Barrick that reported on a study released last Monday by The Barna Group. The article was entitled "Christianity No Longer Looks Like Jesus." According to Ms. Barrick (a professing Christian) only 3 percent of non-Christians between the ages of 16 to 29 years of age express favorable views of Evangelicals. To give you some context, in the previous generation, 25 percent of young people had positive associations toward Christians.
Common negative perceptions among non-Christians is that present-day Christianity is judgmental (87 percent), hypocritical (85 percent), old-fashioned (78 percent), and too involved in politics (75 percent). Ouch! Now I know why people look like they have smelled something a bit "off" when I mention that I am a missionary.
Probably one of the more amazing statistics to me is that 23 percent of young non-Christians said, "Christianity in today's society no longer looks like Jesus." Even more impressive was the fact that young people who self-identified as "born-again Christians" were just as likely to say the same thing (22 percent)!
Christianity has lost Jesus and we can't remember where we put Him.
The study made me wonder, "How can we present Jesus in this world in such a way that He is both relevant (sorry, I almost hate to use that word) and authentic?" John Stott wrote, "[To present Jesus today] a double discipline is needed, negative and positive."
The negative is that we must repent of Christian procrusteanism... it is a real word, I looked it up on the internet! It is derived from a Greek myth about Procrustes, a wicked robber who would invite people to his home to visit. Once there, he would force them to rest on his iron bed. To actually sleep on it there was one condition. They had to fit the bed perfectly! If they were too long, he cut off their legs! If they were too short, he stretched them!
Christian procrusteanism forces Jesus into our mold: political Jesus, pro-family Jesus, heal-the-sick Jesus, etc. No matter what He actually said, no matter what values and priorities He lived and taught, we try to force Jesus into our latest cause.
There is one problem with this (to borrow heavily from C. S. Lewis), Jesus is not a domesticated God. He does not fit our mold or ideas. Instead, He will do everything He can to mold us into His image. Let me assure you, recently some of that molding in my own life has not felt too good!
The positive discipline that the late, John Stott referred to was the absolute necessity of returning to the Jesus of the Biblical text. For Jesus to be authentic we have to return to the Apostolic testimony. Again and again, we must force ourselves to look at what Jesus actually revealed about Himself rather than engaging in our contemporary fantasies.
Dr. Peter Kuzmič is a professor of World Missions and European Studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He wrote: "We must renew the credibility of the Christian mission. [This is not primarily] a question of methodology, money, management and numbers... I frequently tell our seminary students that our task may be simply to 'wash the face of Jesus,' for it has been dirtied and distorted by both the compromises of institutional Christianity through the centuries and the antagonistic propaganda... in recent decades."
Hm, I may not be able to do everything that I would like or feel I should do during these challenging days. However, even as I am caring for Su's physical needs, I hope I can wash off the face of Jesus to such a point that He can be recognized once again. I would hate for Him to remain lost to this generation.
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