I had a conversation with a friend recently that left me feeling embarrassed and devastated.
She lives in public housing, is a sharp as a whip straight talker, can discern a fake from a mile away and in our conversation she was cautioning me to have a realistic understanding of the neighbours in her building. “Lumping people who live in public housing into one category is a mistake,” she told me. “To think that we are all the same is ridiculous.” So I listened to learn from my friend who usually displays a sunnier disposition.
She described an invisible yet real wall that exists between those in her building who struggle with mental illness, addiction and other issues which leave them seriously struggling in life, and those who deem themselves to be more fully functioning. She elaborated on that a little and as she spoke I felt her getting more annoyed. She didn’t like those in the latter group, those who felt they were more fully functioning, because she could see they looked down on those who were considered beneath them, the strugglers, the down and outs, those labelled “hopeless”. According to her, those who marginalised the strugglers just wanted them to disappear and stop being a problem. These people have then become moralising, and feel superior to the people who they think are the problem. As she was speaking, I thought to myself, “That’s terrible. Why do people need to look down on others to feel superior?”
But it’s what she said next that left me feeling embarrassed and devastated.
“And it’s the Christians, the ones who go to church who are the superior and moralising ones. They don’t care about the strugglers but instead, think they are no-hopers”.
I know that every conversation that I have like this has two sides, I know that there is always more to a story than the way that one person tells it, I know there are contextual factors at work here and I have no idea about the dynamics at play in public housing as I am still a learner. However, I was heartbroken to hear that when a person starts going to church or becomes a Christian, they can become more moralising, feel more superior and care less for the poor.
Isn’t following Jesus about identifying with the poor, becoming more compassionate, and being more aware of our desperate need for God’s grace? Is our theology being contaminated by an aspirational culture gone wrong so that Christianity becomes a mere vehicle for success in our lives and world? Are we speaking a gospel of upward mobility rather than downward mobility? Are we better at championing success stories and progress rather than embracing failure, imperfection and grace? Do we present a polished Jesus with shiny teeth, a big grin and a promise to fix our problems rather than a person who was marginalised by his community, hung out with the poor and lived a life of sacrificial love?
Or maybe we are proclaiming a gospel that is world denying? Do we become the church in order to flee our world, cocoon ourselves in a blanket of safety and warm worship so that when we go out into the world we have been discipled to avoid contact with those despised by our society? Dorothy Fortenberry says
“Church isn’t an escape from the world. It’s a continuation of it. My family and I don’t go to church to deny the existence of the darkness. We to go to look so hard at the light that our eyes water.”
Our “eyes water” and so we are compelled to live lives of compassion and sacrifice that depend completely on God’s grace.
I left that conversation with my friend feeling rattled and praying that by God’s grace, hopefully, she will see something different in me.
Sadly your friend is right when saying that “christians” have an air of superiority about them. Please reassure your friend “christians” are like this with all people even other Christians. Jesus still has lots of work to do on “christians” in the midst of loving the rest of the world.
Karina I can understand your feeling embarrassed, but I’m pretty sad (and surprised) that you’d feel ‘devastated’.
I appreciate many of the challenging thoughts in this article though it seems to me to be working on at least two faulty assumptions – that a christian should be perfect at conversion and that if they are not then it is because the church is teaching wrong.
No doubt some churches teach wrong, but it cant be all churches, (otherwise who would be concerned enough to write articles like this? )
There seems to me a dimension in which there is no allowance for the very real issue that christians, at whatever point in their lives, need to grow.
Sometimes – often – the church is teaching right, but it takes individuals time and the work of the Spirit to put it all into practise and this includes individuals living in housing estates, as well as theologians.
I have lots of people from different walks of life who come into our church and I certainly don’t teach, and I try not to model ‘looking down our nose’ on others who are less (or more :^] ) fortunate than we are.
Nonetheless, I know some do and often its those who have had little self worth who, once they get a sense of worth in Jesus, find it hard to immediately shake the pattern of using every little (or big) thing that sets them – in their minds – apart/above others, not to ‘look down on others’.
So initially their immature Christianity is just one more item that they can use to say ‘we’re not like them’.
Like many of our bad habits (and we all have them), it takes time, sometimes years, decades or a whole lifetime even, for God’s Spirit to transform.
This was true of the disciples who didn’t become fully mature at Pentecost and still showed plenty of “room for growth” long after.
Why were the epistles written?
Paul & Barnabas ? Peter & Paul ?
So yes – there are things we need to be focusing on for emphasis in our churches, but the fact that people vary wildly in their application and growth is not always necessarily a sign that we are not teach aright.
What may be helpful is suggestions as to how we could respond to people like your friend, explaining the process of transformation without making excuses.
Blessings.