As a child I was taught that the ends do not justify the means. Or as the New Testament says it, we don’t do evil so that good may result (Romans 3:8). But a new survey reveals that many Evangelicals either haven’t read the New Testament or have decided to scrap that rather inconvenient aspect of Christian morality.

CNN reports that “White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified—more than six in 10 supported it.” That’s right. Evangelicals—those who claim that the Spirit of Jesus Christ lives within them—are more likely to go against the teachings of Jesus (if they believe something good may come of it) than those who seldom or never attend church. In fact, according to this survey, “The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.” It makes me wonder what is being taught in American churches. Is going to church supposed to make us less like Christ?

I know that some will accuse me of being simplistic. They say that these are complicated moral issues. I would agree that ethical arguments regarding violence can be complex. I’ve been studying the moral issues surrounding war and peace for almost thirty years. I’ve read all the arguments from the various perspectives. But there is a certain measure of simplicity in the midst of the complex theories. To justify the use of torture you must either say: a) torture isn’t evil, or b) something—some circumstance—can justify doing evil.

The proponents of torture have been busy with both arguments. White House lawyers wrote memos saying that torture isn’t torture. The arguments are hard to swallow. When other nations used these “techniques,” we called them war crimes. When our own soldiers used them in Vietnam, we court marshaled them. But now they are not torture? That’s the key—now. And that leads to the second argument. The circumstances have changed and because of those circumstances what was a crime is now acceptable. It’s called situation ethics. (See “Tortured Morals” post below.) It was exemplified in recent days by the former vice president of the United States. After the Obama administration authorized the release of torture memos, Dick Cheney called for more. Why? Because he wants the American people to know that we gained information by using these procedures. The argument is clear. If something good came of it, it was not wrong. The ends justify the means.

Now I know that we live in a fallen world. I know that the kingdoms of this world have not yet become the “kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Revelation 11:15). I know that powerful people and powerful nations will spin the truth to justify their actions. They will do evil so that good may come. But the church—the Bride of Christ—is not supposed to share the values of those kingdoms. We are supposed to be the agent of the Kingdom of God in this world. In fact, the church is to be the manifest presence of Christ on earth. How then, can the church call evil good or say that we can do evil so that good may come?

Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way—when we act like our enemies we become like our enemies. This burned in my mind when we discovered that the very prisons that Saddam Hussein used to torture and humiliate people had become venues in which the United States tortured and humiliated. We acted like our enemy, looked like our enemy and became like our enemy.

That happens to the nations. But it should never happen to the church. In fact, St. Paul called it slander to say that Christians believe that the ends justify the means.

“Why not say—as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say—‘Let us do evil that good may result’? Their condemnation is deserved.”

 

If the survey is correct, it is not the world that is slandering the church. The church is doing it. But is it slander if it is true? And is it true? Will we really set aside the message of Jesus because we might get some actionable intelligence? I hope and pray that we will trust Jesus’ wisdom and not the wisdom of this world (1 Corinthians 1:20-25).

 

(For a more graphic view of the survey results, go to http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=156.)

The April 13, 2009 issue of Newsweek proclaims “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Editor Jon Meacham, who describes himself as “an observant (if deeply flawed) Episcopalian,” wrote the cover story. Meacham is an intelligent, articulate Christian. While many in the media don’t seem to get religious issues, Meacham does.

His title, “The End of Christian America,” is intended to be provocative. “This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory.” He goes on to say, “While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character then they were even five years ago.”

I must confess that when I read the article my first response was, “This is good news!” It brought to my mind a darker day and a brighter day in the history of Christianity. The first century was a dark time in terms of the oppression of God’s people. The ruthless Roman Empire saw the emerging Christian church as a threat, so Rome used its vast resources to destroy the church. And yet, it was a bright day. The message of Jesus Christ was being planted in the fertile soil of the Roman Empire and it was growing at a phenomenal rate—so much so that Paul declared, “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth” (Colossians 1:6). Imagine that! First century Christianity had no designs to influence the politics of Rome. It never entered the minds of those early believers to grasp for political power or status. Yet Rome feared them as they followed Jesus Christ.

As time passed Rome lost her fear of the Jesus followers. Constantine neutralized the threat. He did so my making Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. What followed was the bastardization of the faith. Rome did not suffer from the marriage of the church and political power, but the church did. The corrupted church persecuted and killed would-be reformers. In its use of power and violence the church looked like the state, for it learned corruption, coercion and violence from the state as it became the spokesman for the state. And we have never been the same.

Constantine is alive and well. There are still those who believe that the best thing that could happen would be for this nation to become a Christian nation by the use of political power. As they have worked to this end, the results have been disastrous for Christianity. The faith of the New Testament has been confused with and co-opted by American nationalism. Instead of the powerful voice emanating from the Sermon on the Mount, we have a westernized version of Christianity that replaces love with personal freedom as the highest human value. This enables us to justify a whole range of actions that are precluded by the Great Commandment given to us by Jesus Christ.

So the new surveys saying that Americans are falling away from Christianity actually give me hope. You see, I don’t think Americans are rejecting New Testament Christianity. I think they’re rejecting something else. They are rejecting the unholy union of Christianity and nationalism. They are rejecting a faith that just doesn’t ring true. That’s good news!

But this good news comes with a huge challenge. The church is going to have to pull down some idols so that we can clearly proclaim the message of Jesus Christ. Pulling down idols is never popular. But it must be done. The red, white and blue cross will never satisfy. The cross as coercion will never satisfy. The cross as a justification for our way of life will never satisfy. That’s the problem with idols. They just can’t deliver for us.

There’s a new wind blowing. There are a number of Christians, particularly younger Christians, who want to make a difference. They’re rejecting the marriage of Christianity and __________ (fill in the blank). They want a faith that is genuine. That genuine faith—the faith of primitive Christianity—will be a threat to the right and the left. (You won’t hear it proclaimed on Fox News or Air America!) That pure faith will not be co-opted by those who use religious language but still bow down to the idols of power and ideology.

What if…(dream with me for a moment)…what if a new generation is rejecting the perversion of New Testament Christianity? And what if this allowed them to see Jesus? Wouldn’t that be good news? But a huge question remains. Can the church rise to the challenge of proclaiming the good news in a world that still loves Constantine more than Jesus?

It is difficult for me to convey what Christmas means to me. The joy and hope that it brings to me is beyond what I can put into words. And the older I get, the better it gets. The meaning of the birth of Jesus Christ gets richer and more full the more I attempt to comprehend it. Yes, I go a little crazy on the traditions, songs and “feelings” of the season. (I’ve got quite a reputation among my friends as being a Christmas freak.) But that is just the result of a lifelong growing awareness of the meaning of the incarnation.

I have the privilege each year of preaching and teaching on the incarnation. It is an honor and it is a frustration. Have you ever tried to explain something that is too wonderful to explain? You want so badly for your listeners to feel and experience something that you yourself cannot comprehend, much less explain.

Last Christmas my wife bought me a devotional book comprised of the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. All year long I’ve looked forward to reading his insights on Advent. I knew this brilliant theologian and Christian martyr would have plenty to say. I skimmed his topics, but waited for the Advent season to take in his words. I have not been disappointed.

I lit a candle, put on some soft instrumental Christmas music and opened the book to December. Here is the first thing I read…

               Who will celebrate Christmas correctly?

               Whoever finally lays down

               all power, all honor,

               all reputation, all vanity,

               all arrogance, all individualism

               beside the manger.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Christmas is hard to comprehend. God became a man. This is not a fable. This is not a story that ends with a good moral lesson. This is something different. And it’s not just that God put on our humanity, it’s how He did it and why He did it.

What I’ve discovered is that most of us don’t really want to understand it. It’s too compelling and too demanding. We want to celebrate what happened in the manger, but we don’t want it to happen to us. If we fully embraced the manger we would have to fully embrace the cross. If we embraced God becoming fully human it would force us to become fully human—the kind of human He created us to be.

So instead, we tend to go for the trappings rather than the substance. We want to celebrate the “Prince of Peace” but we still want to justify the use of violence. We sing about the “poor baby” in the manger, but we love the prosperity preachers who teach us that He came so we could be rich. We commemorate the powerless child whose parents had to flee to Egypt because they had no recourse against a corrupt government, but we want to demand our rights in a “Christian nation.” (We’ll even threaten the use of our economic power to make sure you say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”)

All of these are ways of saying that it really is just a kid’s story. These are ways of saying that it’s just a fable. These are ways of saying that it’s a beautiful story, but it has little to do with life today—real life.

We grow frustrated when the ideals and teachings of Christmas—the teachings of Jesus Christ—butt heads with reality. But that is precisely the point. Jesus came to butt heads with reality and to lead us into a new reality. If you want working for peace on earth, loving your enemies, and laying down your life to be practical, you’ve missed the whole point. What is “practical” by this world’s standards, in the end, makes no sense at all. Instead of trying to explain away the Sermon on the Mount and make Jesus’ words more palatable, we should ask God to explain it to us. Do we believe Jesus’ message? Or is it akin to a bearded man coming down the chimney. Fun for December, but not worth much in January.

When I say that Christmas is hard to comprehend I’m not talking about our intellectual capacity to understand the story. I’m agreeing with John when he said, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:5). The darkness has a terribly difficult time comprehending—embracing—the light that has invaded it.

It is difficult for me to comprehend the new reality. I know that the manger changed everything. But how do I live every day in the truth of the incarnation? I do agree with Bonhoeffer’s starting point. We must lay down “all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism.” That’s what Jesus did. I wish I could say I’ve done the same, but I’m still in process.

But that’s why Christmas gets better every year. Every year I’m reminded of the unbelievable thing the God of the cosmos did for us. And every year I’m reminded that He calls us to do the same. He became human so that we could become the humans He created us to be. And if He would ask that of us, there is hope that it can happen.

Well…just a few days to go. Election 2008 will be over. The longest and most expensive campaign season in U.S. history will come to an end. (At least we hope it will. We hope we don’t have a repeat of 2000 when the Supreme Court had to figure out who had been elected.)

Most people will lay it down. Oh sure, there will be a few more heated discussions among friends, but not many. But most ordinary people will leave the analysis and second guessing to the professional pundits. We’ll just go back to life as we knew it before.

Some Christians will approach things a little differently. In their intellectual/emotional/spiritual debriefing of the election they will try to fit their theology into the results. Some will look to Paul’s letter to the Romans where he said, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established” (Romans 13:1). By that they’ll conclude that the right people were elected to the right positions. Others will determine that our nation disobeyed God and that we will pay for our sins. It probably depends on how they voted.

But beyond that, most Christians will respond the way the rest of the nation does—by laying it down. “Go back to your lives, citizens! There’s nothing here to see.” They may even conclude that God doesn’t care about politics. After all, it’s a dirty business, isn’t it?

Does God care about politics? Did Jesus ever say anything that could be interpreted politically? Let me say emphatically, yes and yes! But in order to understand our responsibility as political Christians we’re going to have to expand our definition of politics. The term is derived from the Greek word, polis—city. Polity and politics concern the good of the city, state, nation and world. Jesus cares deeply about politics because “God so loved the world” (John 3:16).

But Americans have come to think about politics simply in terms of a two-party system—a system centered as much on gaining power and keeping power as it is on using power to do good. When power is the motivating factor everything crumbles. Many Christians have been sucked into this two-party power play and have convinced themselves that this is the hope of America. I’ve actually heard people say that if we elect the right president or if we get the right Supreme Court justices we can turn this country around for God.

This secular mindset disguised as Christianity wreaks all kinds of havoc. When Christians and Christian organizations elevate political power as the answer to our problems, they begin to compromise their ethics in promoting people to power. Everyone decries the sleaze of this campaign. But, truth be told, the sleaziest stuff I’ve heard has come from Christians. Get on the internet, go to YouTube and you’ll see Christians using half-truths, innuendo, things taken out of context, shabby use of scripture, and outright lies to bring our country “back to God.” Yes, power (and the will to power) corrupts.

Martin Luther King used to say that the church should not be the power of the state; it should be the conscience of the state. I agree. But we can’t be the conscience of the state if we have no conscience when it comes to the pursuit of political power.

Yes, Jesus cares about politics. And he cares about how we do politics. We’re supposed to be imitators of Jesus (that’s what it means to be a disciple), so maybe we should consider how he did politics.

First of all, he never sought power. His life was a life of laying aside his power in order to serve. This is epitomized in the fact that he wouldn’t kill (no matter how noble the cause), but he would willingly die for us. The cross is the symbol of Christianity, but have we lost the meaning of it? It means that there was one who “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing” (Philippians 2:6-7). And the cross not only defines our faith, it gives us a job description. As Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). No two-party power play there. 

This laying aside of power, motivated by love and the desire to do the will of the Father, gave Jesus’ words incredible power—power of another kind. Jesus boldly took on the Roman Empire, the local magistrates and the entrenched, corrupted religious system. He was never afraid to speak out, and because theology and politics were inseparable in the Caesar-worshipping empire, everything he said had political overtones. But his political words were not like those of the Romans or the priests. Rather, “the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority” (Matthew 7:28-29).

There are so many political issues we need to address—war, genocide, hunger at home and abroad, poverty, healthcare, the worldwide AIDS epidemic, human trafficking, abortion, care for the environment, and so many others. But it should be obvious to us by now that Republican or Democratic power have not, and will not, solve these problems. So it seems to me that we are going to have to figure out a third way.

Perhaps this third way can begin by humbly asking Jesus how we can lay down our lives—like he did—for the polis.

I have this thing—this issue, this problem—whatever you want to call it. It stems from something good, but…

My problem is that I care so deeply about how Christianity is viewed in our culture by those who are not Christians. Whether you want to call them nonbelievers, secularists, agnostics, atheists, skeptics, or whether they come from the ranks of other religions, I think a lot—and worry a lot—about how they see Christ. And, of course, how they see Christ is based almost entirely on how they see Christians.

The problem is that I have no control over how Christians present Christ. We are so diverse—Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and about a million different strands of Protestantism. We’re conservative, liberal and everything and everywhere in between. Our worship styles are so varied that you’d think we were from different galaxies, not different denominations. I know that I have no control over how Christians communicate the gospel. It’s a full time job for me to know how I should communicate it without telling others how they should do it.

But could we all pleeeeeeeeeese quit saying crazy things? Could we take a moratorium on making our religion look goofy? It’s hard for a questioning, skeptical world to believe in Jesus when in Jesus’ name we say things that are simply false. False and absurd.

When someone sends you an email stating that the Book of Revelation says that the Antichrist will be a man of Muslin decent in his forties, your response should not be, “Wow, that must be Obama. I’d better forward this to everyone in my address book.” Instead your response should be, “I never read that. I’d better check it out before spreading it around. Because forwarding lies is spreading lies, and spreading lies would be…well…I guess it would be lying.”

By the way, if you were to check it out you’d discover that the Book of Revelation never says anything like that. Islam didn’t even exist when John wrote his vision from Patmos. (There are a lot of Biblical scholars that are pretty certain who the real "Beast" of Revelation is, or was—Nero Caesar. But that’s a whole other subject.) If you did some other research you’d also discover that Barack Obama took his Senate oath of office on the Bible—not the Koran, that he’s not afraid to say the pledge of allegiance and that he was not educated in a jihadist school when he lived in Indonesia. Oh, and by the way, he’s not a Muslim.

It is vital that we all remember one thing—Christianity does not teach that the ends justify the means. If a Christian thinks that Barack Obama should not be president, that does not give that Christian a license to use smears, innuendo and flat out lies to discredit the senator. And what is most heinous is that there are the web sites and emails that do it in the name of Jesus.

When I was a kid growing up in an evangelical church, I was taught that I had a responsibility to show Jesus to others. I remember a phrase we’d hear often—“You may be the only Bible the world ever reads.” Even as a youngster I got what that meant. It meant that if I call myself a Christ follower I have a responsibility to do my best to live like a Christ follower.

The Christian message is a scandal. In fact, Paul used that very word—scandalon—to talk about how Jesus’ message causes men to stumble. The thought of God becoming a man, the belief in resurrection, the command to love our neighbors and our enemies—that is difficult enough. It takes grace and faith to go there. But when we do evil—when we lie—in the name of Jesus we make the Jesus message something ugly to those who do not understand its beauty.

Two of our early leaders told us how we are to speak to those who do not follow Jesus...

Paul said, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace…” (Colossians 4:5-6)

Peter said, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)

Gentleness, respect, conversations full of grace—I think that would include telling the truth. And I think the world ought to hear Christ in our truthful, gracious speech whether we're voting for John McCain or Barack Obama.

(Just a note. If you have any doubt as to whether or not the mainstream media have noticed the “Obama is the Antichrist” emails, click here. A CNN/Time report says that “A Google search for ‘Obama’ and ‘Antichrist’ turns up more than 700,000 hits, including at least one blog dedicated solely to the topic.”)