Don't Tell Me You're a Christian

Show me

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

We were watching football when our 13-year-old son out of nowhere asked, “Hey, do you remember when C.J. Stroud was being interviewed after a game and he started thanking Jesus and they cut away from the interview?”¹

“No, we don’t remember that,” my husband and I responded. And we ended the conversation there.

I thought I knew what he was getting at. It’s the kind of “persecution” I’ve heard people talk about my whole life. If you have a platform, you’re supposed to use it to talk about Jesus. If you use that platform and you get shut down for it, no matter the reason, it is a sign that the culture is persecuting Christians for talking about Jesus.

In many ways, this is an oversimplification of the cycle, but in American Christian circles, it’s become the expectation that if you have a public platform, you are supposed to use it to talk about your faith. If you aren’t using that platform, you aren’t fully using the opportunities God himself has given you to spread his Gospel to the nations.

I saw this play out over and over again as a child.

My parents looked for every opportunity to point out when someone famous or important was a Christian. We listened to Christian music (favorites being Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Michael Card) and watched Christian television specials.² By my pre-teen and early teen years, I had a monthly subscription to Focus on the Family’s teen girl magazine Brio, and every month I read interviews with famous Christians who talked about how Jesus had changed their lives and how they resisted the temptations of the world to live God-pleasing lives. I had a poster of Candice Cameron on my wall and admired her for being so faithful as a girl growing up in Hollywood, and I aspired to be like her.

In my personal life, I didn’t have many opportunities to interact with non-Christians because I went to a Christian school until I was in sixth grade. Even then, when I went to public school after we moved to Wyoming, nearly all of my friends were Christian or Mormon, and my Mormon friends lived their faith even more openly than my Christian friends did.

By the time we moved back to Michigan before my junior year of high school, I had increasing interactions with my non-Christian classmates, both in the classroom and in extracurricular activities such as theater. But I still sought out Christian friends. I attended the weekly Fellowship of Christian Students meetings on Friday mornings in my psychology teacher’s classroom. I participated in See You At the Pole all four years of high school. I even went with a friend to a couple of meetings of Young Life; I had fun but I wasn’t impressed by the number of kids attending. I knew what they were like in school. I heard them talk about their weekend activities and saw how they treated others around them. For the first time, I started to question the honesty of people claiming they were Christians.

My years in Ongoing Ambassadors for Christ had not prepared me for this. My years with close youth group friendships had given me a firm expectation of what to expect from my Christian peers. Unfortunately, those expectations were mostly moral. Real Christians didn’t smoke, drink, or have premarital sex. Real Christians went to church every Sunday and if they were true Christians belonging to a liturgical church like mine, they also went every Wednesday during Lent and Advent and then for youth group and Bible study and every other opportunity the Church offered. Yes, we believed we were sinners in need of a Savior, but the fruit of our faith was evident in our behavior. We might screw up, but our screw-ups wouldn’t be as big as those of our peers.

And through all of this, I was still trained to admire those in the public eye who were fighting the good fight of spreading the Good News of Jesus to the secular world.

Years later, I look back at my 17-year-old self and I have so much grace for her. I know what she is going to see and experience as she moves into adulthood. I know the crushing blows coming her way. I know the people she is going to meet and the ways they will, for better and for worse, impact her life. And I know just how sincerely she is holding onto a moral standard as a demonstration of her faith.

Because somehow, the camp song “They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love” was never meant to be a theme song. When we sang “Glory, glory we’re the branches,” we weren’t learning to produce good fruit that would nourish our neighbors. Instead, our true mission was to be soldiers in “The Lord’s Army.”

Unfortunately, this focus on finding “faithful” Christians in the public sphere who are willing to fight for Christian power and influence has done more harm than good to the witness of Christ.

Instead of spreading love, they have promoted hatred toward those who do not fall in line. Instead of spreading joy, they have reveled in the misery of their enemies. Instead of peace, they have celebrated the wartime destruction of both allies and those who stand in the way of American dominance. Instead of patience, they have railed against regulations and safety measures that get in the way of their immediate satisfaction. Instead of kindness and goodness, they have adopted cruelty and the celebration of evil. Instead of faithfulness, they have embraced leaders who are faithless in both their personal and professional lives. Instead of gentleness and self-control, they have embraced harsh rhetoric and the need for immediate gratification.

Honestly, in my adult life, I have seen more Christ-like behavior from my non-Christian friends and neighbors than I regularly see from my fellow Christians.

In the musical My Fair Lady, the young Freddy tracks down a grieving Eliza and professes his love to her. After months of being emotionally abused by Henry Higgins, Eliza doesn’t want to hear pretty words and proclamations; she wants someone to demonstrate his love for her. She sings, “Tell me no dreams filled with desire. If you're on fire, Show me…Don't talk of love lasting through time. Make me no undying vow. Show me now!”

Increasingly I feel like the frustrated Eliza. I’m tired of people telling me they are Christians. I want them to show me.

Show me that the education of poor children and those with different abilities matters more than having lower property taxes on unnecessarily large houses. Show me that the public safety of neighbors matters more than personal arsenal. Show me that caring for the sick and needy matters more than the status of a 401K. Show me a desire to protect refugees and asylum seekers. Show me that our natural home matters more than endless economic prosperity.³ Show me a belief in a big God who can do big things and trust that in caring for the needs of others, all of our needs will be cared for as well.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, he specifically reaches out to a broken Peter. As Jesus was being questioned and whipped, Peter denied him. Peter had chosen his own safety over admitting he had spent the last three years following Jesus’ every footstep. Jesus asks him, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Just as Peter denied him three times, Jesus asks him the same question three times. He directs Peter to “Feed my Lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep.”⁴

He doesn’t tell Peter to fight the Roman Empire. He doesn’t tell Peter to overthrow the religious leadership. He doesn’t even tell Peter to lead a small rebellion centralized in Jerusalem.

He tells Peter to care for his people. That’s it. Peter’s duty is to love and care for the needs of those Jesus will eventually leave behind at his ascension.

And as modern Christians, that is our duty too, to show our love in a way that produces good fruit, because using a bulldozer doesn’t nurture faith, it destroys it.

It is a lesson far too many have ignored for far too long. As Eliza Dolittle sang, “Don’t waste my time, Show me!”

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1. Considering my son is a committed University of Michigan fan, you can see why we felt this was completely out of the blue. And even though he still pays attention to the Texans after our years in Houston, his loyalties lie with the Colts, regardless of how bad the last couple of seasons have been.

2. And of course, this led to uncomfortable moments when individuals like Amy Grant and Sandy Patty disappointed the entire American Christian world with scandals like divorce and affairs. I wrote about that here.

3. Because let’s be honest. If there is no planet left, there will also be no economic prosperity.

4. John 21:15-17