WSJ & Christmas

As of Tuesday I officially finished my first semester of fashion design classes! It has been a whirlwind as I started just 3 days after we moved to Houston. With one project after another I haven't really had much time for anything else. I realized just yesterday how non-stop it had been. So, now I am taking the much needed "free-time" to make dentist appointments, get in touch with old friends, and check un-read emails that have stacked up for months.

One I came across was this article from the Wall Street Journal. I think it is appropriate anytime, but even more so as Christmas is coming. I wonder what a survey would say if they asked people how they see Christians and Christmas relating. (Our sermon on Sunday asked us what we thought the most important thing about Christmas was. Since we were in Church, of course we knew Jesus was the right answer. But, what the pastor pointed out was what is really the most important thing for us is what we fight for and protect. Is it the tradition of how/when you open gifts what you are going to fight for and protect? Or will you fight and protect how you celebrate and recognize Jesus' birth? To be honest, I realize what I fight for is what food I will eat [its tradition!] or what ornaments I will hang [they are my special ornaments and it isn't Christmas without them!].)

I thought this article and the sermon point were both really applicable to all of us at Christmas. What do you think is more important - your traditions and the "right" thing or reflecting who Jesus really is?

When people look at us, do they see Christ?

Written by Tony Woodlief
October 22, 2007 58 Comments

A few weeks ago the Barna Group conducted a survey of 16- to 29-year-olds (Christians and non-Christians) to assess their impressions of Christianity. The findings, especially as Christians once again find ourselves poised to descend into the muck of national politics, ought to be troubling.

Researchers offered respondents 20 perceptions of Christians — 10 positive and 10 negative — and asked which apply. While considerable majorities perceive that Christianity has good values and principles, and is friendly, an even greater majority think it teaches the same basic ideas as other religions — and that this is a good thing. Still greater percentages of respondents, meanwhile, perceive Christianity as judgmental and hypocritical.

Lest anyone conclude that this is simply the assessment of heathens, half of the Christians surveyed say that Christianity as practiced today in the U.S. is not only judgmental and hypocritical, but too political. It’s hard to write off the opinions of the non-Christians regardless, because the average non-Christian respondent to the survey has five Christian friends, while four out of five regularly attended church themselves (probably as children) in the past.

Most disturbing is that the perception garnering greatest agreement among respondents is that Christianity means hostility to homosexuals. More than any other image, this best defines what Christianity is to young non-Christian Americans (80 percent of young Christians, meanwhile, confirm that it is an accurate perception of Christianity).

I can sense some commenters to this post already thumbing their way to Leviticus. My goal is not to provoke an argument about what Christ does or doesn’t say regarding gays. My point is that our words and actions shape how others see Christ, and a highly-respected research organization reveals that a great many young people perceive Christians not as a body of grace-filled believers, but as a crowd of angry, hypocritical politicos. It puts me in mind of a vignette in Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew, about a woman whose life has been destroyed by drugs and prostitution. When someone asks her if she’s thought of going to a church for help, she replies: “Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”

Regarding the homosexuality finding, when researchers delved deeper, respondents told them that Christians not only hate the sin, but make clear their contempt for the sinner. A majority of young Christians, further, say that their churches have elevated the sin of homosexuality so that it is somehow a greater sin than others, all while failing to offer meaningful guidance about how to interact with gays in a manner reflective of Christ.

All of this — the perceptions of how Christians behave toward homosexuals as well as the general perceptions about Christian hypocrisy and mercilessness — can be summed in what the researchers say was one of the most common unprompted perceptions, that “Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus.”

We get overwrought, especially in election years, about the state of the country, and the evils of politicians (who almost always come, it seems, from one party and not the other). What if we took four years off from national politics, and devoted them instead to the politics of our own hearts? It seems that — in the eyes of young Americans, at least — many of us Christians are decidedly unchristian in our behavior.

Perhaps the silver lining in this cloud is that non-Christians seem to sense that Christ would not approve. Maybe, despite our sins of anger and hatred, despite our forgetting that we are forgiven as we forgive, and our overlooking that we are saved by grace alone, so that no man may boast — perhaps we may at the very least not sully the name of Christ in our zeal to condemn.

I’m going to try to think less about what Jesus is going to say to other sinners on judgment day, and more about what he will say to me, and to all of us who claim to represent him.

Click here for the full post after the jump…

Sander and I are off tomorrow morning to hear this "definitive" speech by Romney. My sister Victoria works as the Bush Presidential Library and has miraculously managed to get not one, but TWO tickets to this invitation only speech. Romney has chosen to fill it with only his invited guests and the press. We'll keep you updated.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16933414

All Things Considered, December 5, 2007 ·
In a speech at Texas A&M University, Romney will try to dispel concerns
about his religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The speech
has been compared to John F. Kennedy's address to Protestant Evangelical pastors
in 1960, and he hopes it will give him an easier forum to explain a complicated
religion.
For example, last week during the CNN/YouTube debate, Romney was
asked an awkward question for a Mormon: Does he believe every word of the Bible?
"You know," Romney sputtered uncharacteristically, "yes, I believe it's the
word of God, the Bible is the word of God. The Bible is the word of God. I mean,
I might interpret the word differently than you interpret the word, but I read
the Bible and I believe the Bible is the word of God. I don't disagree with the
Bible. I try to live by it."
Romney did not say he believes the Bible is
inerrant, which evangelical Christians do. Nor did he say he believes the Book
of Mormon is a new revelation from God, which Christians reject. Such
theological shoals are difficult to negotiate in sound bites. And so Romney is
offering a summary of his faith on his own terms – uninterrupted – in a speech
in Texas on Thursday.
Shaun Casey, an expert on religion and politics at
Wesley Theological Seminary, says Romney will be talking to the people he needs
to in order to win the Republican nomination: the nearly 40 percent of white
evangelicals who hold an unfavorable opinion of the Mormon faith.
"He has to
show that his Mormon values are equivalent with evangelical, Christian values,"
Casey says. "The difficulty is he really can't drill down very far doctrinally
or theologically because of some of the historic differences and the historic
animosity between evangelical Christians on the one hand and Mormons on the
other."
You could hear that ambivalence at Bob Evan's restaurant in
Springfield, Va., where a group of men met to study the Bible on Wednesday
morning. While Mormons insist that their faith is Christian, Lou Preebee says,
they hold different views of the role of Jesus, salvation, the afterlife and the
Trinity.
"By definition, you have to wonder if Mormonism is an authentic
Christian faith. Most evangelicals would say definitely not," Prebee says,
adding that electing a Mormon president would send a signal. "It gives a
validation of Mormonism as a legitimate Christian denomination, which it is
not."
Computer programmer Eric Hughes is willing to consider Romney — and he
says Romney's speech could help or hurt his vote.
"Probably the biggest deal
breaker for me would be if he were to go up there and claim that fundamental
Christianity and Mormonism are identical," he said.
Why would that be a deal
breaker?
"There are so many chameleons," Hughes says, "I would love to see
somebody who can be completely open and honest with their faith."
Ralph
Weitz, a lay minister, says he, too, is troubled by the doctrines of Mormonism.
"But on the other side, the Mormon faith does bring some values to the
table, just like Kennedy's Catholicism did," Weitz says. "And he needs to
clarify how much he will be controlled by the denomination, versus a faith that
brings value."
In September 1960, then-Sen. John F. Kennedy made a speech to
Evangelical leaders in Houston, Texas. Like Romney, Kennedy faced questions
about whether he would follow the wishes of his church in public policy. He
declared he would not. And he warned about religious intolerance.
"For while
this year, it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed,
in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew, or a Quaker, or a
Unitarian, or a Baptist," Kennedy told the conservative pastors.
Kennedy
added: "It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that
helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the
victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious
society is ripped at a time of great national peril."
But much has changed in
nearly a half-century. In 1960, political candidates were not expected to wear
their faith on their sleeve, as many do today. Kennedy also represented a
religion followed by nearly one-third of all Americans. Mormonism claims about 3
percent.
And yet, some evangelical leaders have been receptive to Romney's
message. Albert Mohler at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville
has not endorsed Romney, but says he finds him an "attractive candidate."
"I
find him attractive in terms of his policy positions," Mohler says. "And, I
think along with many evangelicals, I would find Mitt Romney very attractive in
terms of who he is as a man, as a husband, as a father. I think you're looking
at someone who really does have the kind of experience, who carries himself like
a president, and one that evangelicals could see in that office."
Mohler says
evangelicals who say they won't vote for a Mormon may reconsider:
"If, for
instance, there is a liberal Democrat, a Hillary Clinton, for example, at the
top of the Democratic ticket, I think an awful lot of evangelicals will
discover, 'Well, you know, a week ago, I didn't think I could vote for a Mormon.
But now, I think I will.'"
Mitt Romney hopes to make that easier for them,
starting with Thursday's speech.

Click here for the full post after the jump…