“I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.”
1 Corinthians 4:3-4
Getting into discussions with him is fascinating because he lives what he preaches – – for over 20 years he has been serving on the front-lines of the inner-city helping those who are caught in cycles of poverty, and trying to wake the suburban church up to the needs of the urban community. It is tough work, but my brother-in-law has given his life to it out of love for Christ.
During our discussion, he made the comment, “When it comes to addressing the LGBT community and their aggressive goals to make their lifestyle choices mainstream, Christians need to not get so angry. They need to love the LGBT community through sacrificial and subversive love, and not by reacting in simple political sound-bytes. Christians need to lead by learning to serve.”
I asked him two questions: (1) Which group of Christians is he talking about? (2) Is there ever a time when it is O.K. for a Christian to stand up and make their case for God’s design in marriage and how this design is the best thing for society?
He paused a second and said, “I never thought about the first question. I guess I am speaking of Christians in general terms.” I replied, “I am not sure we can speak of Christians in general terms because, while yes, there are some Christians who need to shut-up; there are also some who need to speak up. You seem to be upset with the callousness of the first group, and I feel burdened to wake up the apathy and ignorance of the second.”
After this talk, I personally felt like I needed more clarity on how different Christians approach the cultural issues of the day. Most of the time all Christians have been lumped into one monolithic group, but we aren’t. In fact, many times one group of Christians are furiously attacking another group of Christians. And if we don’t clarify the differences in the groups, sooner or later we are all going to be lumped into one giant nebulous mass that the media and popular culture at large has labeled as “The Haters.”
But we don’t all hate, in fact, I think many of us are quietly serving as Christ would have us serve, while there are some that are big haters and hypocrites. So here is my personal assessment on the 6 classes of Christians…
The Brute is the Christian who is “intolerant” to anyone he disagrees with because he believes being friendly means being ‘yoked-together’. So to stay pure, righteous, and holy from the evil world around them, they go on the attack. They do this to distance themselves from the wicked acts of society. They do this to prove their favored nation status with God.
Sadly, many of these Christians really do hate. They are taught to believe the sinner becomes one with his sin. And if they were honest, the wrath of God being poured out on the wicked delights them. But their hatred doesn’t stop there. They seem to hate all the other groups of Christians because they are not as sold out as they should be. It is this group, the Brutes, that the world seems to think is the majority Christian group – – when in fact, they are a tiny little sliver of the larger Christian Church. The other Christian groups want nothing to do with “The Brutes” because they are an embarrassment to the name of Jesus.
I knew a lot of Brutes in my time, and they never seem truly happy.
The Disillusioned is the Christian who bleeds “Red, White and Blue.” They also think and believe there is a right way to dress and behave to procure God’s blessing. They just don’t realize how faded the America they once knew has become. They want the 50’s back where everyone thinks and believes the same way. Anyone living outside the “unspoken and assumed” norms needs to be pointed out and shouted down. “How can people not see how wrong homosexuality, feminism, tree hugging, and not growing the church by the ‘homogeneous unit principle’ is?”
I wouldn’t call these Christians haters. They do probably hate liberals (The Advocates), intellectual progressives, late night talk show hosts, and more than likely the President. They hate how their world is being stolen from them right underneath their feet, they hate how everything they believe in is mocked.
But they don’t hate individual homosexuals, poor blacks and feminists; it is just their lifestyle that makes them furious. This is not hatred, it is red-hot disagreement – – there is a difference. The difference is this: They don’t want the homosexual to rot in hell, but they do want them to be quiet. They do want them to get saved. But it frustrates them when these people can’t see things the way they do. I also think they get frustrated with those Christians who kindly dialogue with these same people, and even find some of their opinions reasonable.
I know a lot of the Disillusioned. Their world is slipping away from them, and they are scared. For the most part, they really are good people, just sad and upset that the world is no longer what it once was.
The Compelled is the Christian who really believes God’s Word is true, and it behooves the believer to direct his life by it. The hard part of this is finding balance between communicating truth and having compassion on those who are caught in sin. And make no mistake, the Compelled takes sin seriously, homosexuality included.
The problem of taking sin seriously is that at times, to the non-Christian, it looks like hate. The main priority for the Compelled is to please God, and this often puts them at odds with the tastes & trends of the current culture. But they definitely are not haters. They are the first to reach out with an olive branch to the sinner so they can also extend to them the mercy of God. Their love is not loud because they are not trying to win political points; most of the time they don’t want their left hand knowing what their right hand is doing. So while they are by far the Christian majority, the world barely notices them.
One thing does infuriate them – – passionately political Christians. Both from the far right, The Brutes; and the far left, The Advocates. They both wrongly are using the name of Jesus to push forward their human agenda.
The Quiet is the Christian who hates conflict of any kind. Peace is their main goal. While peace is noble, it will not make waves even when truth is at stake, and it hates when others make waves.
This group does not hate, however they do look down on the troublemakers. Somehow this group believes if you ignore something long enough the problem will go away. Don’t mess with the hive so you don’t stir up the bees. So they are disappointed when the Compelled try to argue for God’s perfect design for marriage because it causes conflict. They also are disappointed at the Advocate for pushing their agenda because it causes conflict.
The simple problem with this group is that sooner or later you must take a side…and they don’t want to.
The Confused is the Christian who defines love in a naive, fuzzy, Utopian way. Love, to the Confused mind, believes people should be able to live any way they want and God will never judge them. They believe love accepts every lifestyle choice. They believe love does not hate evil.
These Christians don’t hate because they believe love will never hate. What they don’t realize is that they don’t have a hot love, it is luke-warm. They really don’t love God’s design for life enough, because they don’t hate those things that work against it, corrode and destroy it.
This group is frustrated by those groups that really do hate sin. They believe their love is far superior to the hate of the righteous. But this kind of love can not make sense out of a man dying on the cross. Jesus hated sin enough to die. They may be nice, but they are not to be trusted to love you enough to protect you from evil.
The Advocate is the Christian who is tired of the status quo (a.k.a. patriarchal majority) because they believe the status quo is the product of tyrants and systemic evil. They believe, like Moses leading the Israelites out of the grip of Pharaoh; they must lead the oppressed minority to the promised land of progressive hopes and dreams. And by progressive, there is really no difference between political progressives and theological progressives – – both want to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves by using the tool of revolution, literary deconstruction and false idols of equality and tolerance. The Advocate is not a happy person.
Sadly, many of these Christians really do hate. And what they hate is the Christianity they grew up in and often were hurt by. Instead of discovering God’s revealed truth they often are deciding upon what is true to the elite culture at this particular time. Anything tasting like “old school traditional religion”, like studying the word, sharing the gospel, staying sexually pure, needs to be rejected and re-imagined.
This group is the most vocal against the other groups of Christians. They don’t want to be associated with any form of the faith they grew up in, so they do all they can to distance themselves from traditional Christianity. They are embarrassed by those who heed God’s Word above man’s. Especially progressive man’s. And because of this, they will often advocate for the most ridiculous things (ie: Defending Islam) just so they won’t be labeled as an ignorant Christian Brute.
What they ultimately want is for all Christians to either join the revolution or shut-up. The majority had their day in the sun…now it is the minority’s turn to set the agenda.
CONCLUSION
The biggest thing I want you to see is that the vast majority of Christians do not hate. They really don’t! And those who do hate are the ones most likely to point the finger calling other people haters.
If we are truly followers of Jesus we will not judge the hearts of men, but we will judge the action of sin. It is a tough balance, but it needs to be made.
So, which group are you in?
