This week we have seen four different misplaced priorities that can creep into the lives of Christians and cause them to project a brand and image of Christianity that is clearly unbiblical and is not Christ centered.  Today, I want to share a story of a brother in Christ who was willing to live His faith and reflect Jesus Christ in a way that brought much glory to God through his sacrifice:

Sebastian walked through the halls of the palace daily. He had worked hard to get to this position in the royal guard, but once he had gotten to Rome, he restrained himself from the idolatrous lifestyle of imperial Rome. He only wanted to serve Christ wholeheartedly.

When Emperor Diocletian heard of his restraint, he had little interest in his service record. He confronted him and found out about his faith. At this, he ordered Sebastian taken outside the city and shot to death with arrows. The soldiers did their job and left his body to rot. Soon a group of Christians came to give his body a proper burial,

As they lifted him, one of them exclaimed, “He moves!”

“Shhh!” cautioned another. “Let us take him somewhere safe.”

Sebastian was taken to one of their homes where he was treated and recovered from his injuries. As soon as he was well enough, he placed himself before the emperor again. Once he had tasted the hope of heaven, the pleasures of this world had even less appeal for him.

The emperor was of course shocked to see Sebastian seemingly back from the dead. He ordered Sebastian seized and beaten to death and his body thrown into the sewer. His body was recovered again by Christians and buried in the catacombs.

This story of a faithful perseverance in following Jesus to the end comes from the Voice of the Martyrs Persecution Blog and ends with a challenge to each one of us to truly embrace a brand of Christianity that is all about Jesus.  The author continues with this challenge that sums up where we have been this week:

Sexual immorality. Unbecoming language. Stealing. Lying. Cheating. Too many Christians define themselves exclusively by what they do not do. Certainly, there is a whole host of activities that God forbids his people to practice. However, restraint is not profitable in and of itself. Sebastian was not martyred merely for his restraint—otherwise he would have been killed for simply being a good person. He was martyred for his forthright faith. Likewise, we must restrain or hold back from evil in order to fully embrace God’s commands. Obey. Worship. Love. Serve. Define your faith by what you do, not simply that which you do not. Are you known for merely being a good person or for being a good person with an outspoken faith?

My hope and prayer is that God would make us radical followers of Jesus Christ who will not compromise and be unashamed to be known as Christians.  Not political, legalistic, cultural, or philosophy-driven Christians, but Christians who will follow Jesus even if it costs us our lives.

The fourth and final misplaced priority of Christians that can reflect negatively on the image and brand of Christianity is philosophy-driven Christians.  Philosophy-driven Christians are people who ascribe to Christianity is merely an academic pursuit.  They see Christianity as a great philosophy to be observed, studied, and debated.  It is not a bad thing to study the Bible or Christianity academically.  The problem arises when the academic pursuit becomes such a priority that it causes you to miss the relationship with Jesus Christ that the Bible is all about.  This is embracing the thoughts of Christianity without embracing the core - Jesus Christ.

The problem with the Christian brand that philosophy-driven Christians present is that they present an academic, knowledge-driven Christianity that can be completely void of any relationship with Jesus Christ.  You can know the Bible and know a lot of academic knowledge about Jesus but not know Jesus as your Savior and Lord.  Philosophy-driven Christians need to see Jesus Christ as the core of their Christian studies and come to him for a relationship in which Jesus transforms them into His image.  Then they need to continue to pursue their academic studies driven by worship and reverence for a God who that cannot wrap their minds around.

The third false priorities of Christians that reflect negatively on the image and brand of Christianity are cultural Christians.  Cultural Christians are very similar to the legalistic Christians that we looked at yesterday in only one point.  Both the cultural Christians and the legalistic Christians have never embraced Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and become Christians.  They are merely impostors who are playing Christian games merely because they think that it will bring some benefit to them.  Cultural Christians are people who are Christians only to the fact that they have no true religious affiliation and live in a nation like the United States that chooses to embrace Christianity.

These are people who celebrate Christian holidays such as Easter and Christmas without having the relationship with Jesus Christ to embrace the full meaning.  They may also go to church, as I heard a pastor once say, as CEOs - Christmas and Easter only.  This minimal church attendance is only to make them feel like good people for going on the special days.  

These cultural Christians may also use there religion to benefit them.  By claiming to be a Christian, cultural Christians may be able to avoid conversations about faith that may be uncomfortable because they have an answer and a church name, that they attend twice a year, to end the conversation.   Cultural Christianity is seen very frequently in politics.  Candidates will be quick to claim that they are Christians and get some good photo opportunities in some churches in order to become friends with the extremely political Christians that we explored on Tuesday.  

Even though cultural Christians may play the Christian card to get ahead, they are the ones that really need Jesus.  They need to realize that claiming Christianity without knowing Jesus is not true Christianity.  They need to repent of their sin and Christian games and run to Jesus.  This will allow the name, brand, and image of Christians to be defined not by a buzz-word that gets personal benefits but rather a name that defines followers of Jesus Christ.

The second false priority of Christians that gives a negative brand to Christianity is legalistic Christians.  Before we begin, let me define legalism.  Legalism is not good moral living and following the commands and laws of scripture in order to live in a way that pleases God and seeks holiness.  Legalism is a life of embracing the rules for the only purpose of proving to the legalist and to others that the legalist is better than everyone else because the legalist keeps the rules and others do not.  The legalist loves to be seen doing good deeds and loves to point out others failures in doing good deeds.

This false priority of legalism leads to forgetting grace.  A legalist loves to follow the rules to the point where they feel like they do not need grace.  ”Why would Jesus have to die on the cross for them?” they think.  ”I am such a good person who follows all of the rules.  I will make heaven a better place just by my presence there.  I do not need Jesus because I am a good moral person with no real sin to speak of.”  The legalist does not stop with not needing grace personally but goes on to totally fail to extend any grace to others.  If someone else falls in their good works, the legalist will be the first to point out the flaw and make sure that everyone sees this great show of failure.  Then only to look for a place to note to others how good the legalist is at morality and how the legalist would never fall like that.

Legalism causes problems because it presents a picture of Christianity that does not need Jesus.  There is no reason to tell someone about Jesus because to the legalist Jesus is functionally a moral judge that the legalist is trying to impress rather than a rescuing Savior that the legalist is falling down in worship before.  The life of a legalist also projects that sin is not a personal problem that effects everyone.  Sin is something that “bad people” do in the mind of the legalist.  It is not something that everyone struggles with and needs to be rescued from.  

Legalist Christians need to realize that, if they truly believe that there morality sets them in right standing before God, they need to repent and run to Jesus and receive salvation.  The way that the life of a legalist is structured has no room for sin, repentance, and Jesus.  Christians who embrace legalism are not really Christians.  They are just copy-cats trying to act like Christians without truly embracing Jesus and coming to him to be their salvation.  These false Christians need to repent and stop putting a stain on the Christian name and brand that they copy in outward appearance but fail to embrace.

Since the presidential election is only a week away, I figured that we would begin with the first misplaced priority that has negatively reflected on the Christian brand in the eyes of many people.  Politics is something that many Christians have taken to become the core priority of their faith.  This is something that happens more unintentionally than they even realize.  There passion and desire for Jesus Christ that was at one time at the core of their faith and what defined them as a Christian seeps slowly into the background as they take up to fight for a government that legislates Christian morals and priorities.  

I am not saying that politics are a bad thing, or that you should not vote for candidates that you think reflect the values and priorities laid out in scripture.  The problem becomes when the American flag takes the place of the cross in our churches and the Battle Hymn of the Republic is played over Amazing Grace.  Our place of triumph, victory, and focus as Christians should be a hill called Calvary where Jesus Christ defeated death, hell, and sin not a battle field where our freedoms were won.  The second is definitely something to be remembered and celebrated but never at the expense of minimizing the cross and the gospel.  

We as Christians are called to be focused on another world.  We are to live as aliens focused on eternity.  When we make our Christianity focused entirely on politics and defending morals in America, we are living in a way that is so focused on now that we do not live a life focused on the temporary mission with eternal consequences called the Great Commission.  Our ability and opportunity to share Jesus with people can be greatly hindered if politics are the heart of our Christianity.  Politics stands between us and the person we are trying to introduce to Jesus as another point of division and debate.  

If your life is totally defined by and wrapped up in what happens next Tuesday, you need to pray for an eternal mindset and that God would open your eyes to see that no matter what happens next Tuesday He still sits on the throne as sovereign over all nations and rulers.  Let us not live in a way that defines our Christianity by our politics that are temporal decisions that can cause major divisions and take away from the gospel.

In the marketing and business world, there is a very important item called a brand.  A brand is something that is hard to define, but it is basically what people think about and connect with the name or logo of your business.  It is the initial reaction to your product or company.  This reaction is built off of past experiences with the brand (i.e. your company or product) and includes both the positives and the negatives.  

This week I want to take this concept of a brand and apply it to each one of our lives as Christians.  When people interact with us since they know that we claim to be a Christ-follower, they will begin to define the term or brand of Christian by the way that we live.  I think one of the major issues that we will explore this week is that false brands of Christianity come first and foremost from misplaced and misdirected priorities in the lives of Christians.  This discussion will begin by defining four false priorities that many Christians embrace and will end with a story of someone who fully embraced the gospel.  So this week, lets reflect on our priorities as Christ-followers that help to brand the concept of Christian in the eyes of people around us.

I just finished Truth and Tolerance by Pope Benedict XVI.  I was very impressed with the Pope’s knowledge of the fields of sociology, philosophy, politics, history, and theology.  He is able to take the current issue of tolerance being the standard for faith-based conversations and showing the logical fallacy in tolerance. This is the fallacy that intolerance of people who are not tolerant is in an of itself and expression of intolerance.  Pope Benedict also continually points to the problems with humanity being fulfilled in the gospel.  He also is able to argue the validity of Christianity through tracing the growth of the relationship of God to man starting with the call of Abraham and making his way all the way to modern Christianity.  With regard to the underlying desire for freedom that drives the philosophy of tolerance, Pope Benedict attributes this desire for freedom to the core sin nature of man and man’s desire to be god.  This is a very brilliant book arguing the underlying premise that freedom in any form without truth is not freedom at all.  This is a very academic and well-articulated book presenting the fallacy of tolerance and the necessity of the truth of the gospel.

I was sitting in class yesterday, and the professor went off on a very interesting tangent that I think we as Christians must address.  My professor was sharing about the time that he was asked to speak for a Christian athletes event at a well-known Baptist college in town.  He came in and gave his presentation and then was invited by some students to stay after the meeting as they brought out a keg of beer.  This is a story that I have heard this professor share multiple times, but this time he added some additional commentary that was profound.  He said that he was shocked that Christian athletes were drinking.  He then went on to raise the point that since these are Christian athletes at a Christian school there should be something different about them than the athletes at a state school like the college I attend.  

This professor who, to my knowledge, has never claimed any religious identity at all knows that there should be something different about Christians.  There should be a defining mark in the lives of Christians with regard to what we participate in and do not participate in that should set us apart from the rest of the world.  This professor was watching for this mark of distinction and found none.  I think this is the reason this story keeps coming up.  People are watching so the question is are we representing Christ well in our actions, decisions, and lifestyles.

On May 7th, 2008, a group of influential Christian leaders including Timothy George, OS Guiness, Rich Mouw, and Dallas Willard gathered together to define what it means to be an evangelical Christian.  The document that came out of this meeting is called The Evangelical Manifesto.  This document has had its critics and champions.  Some notable and well respected Christians have decided not to sign this document for various reasons.  Dr. Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, did not sign due to its lack of a strong theology in defining evangelicals and their roles in society.  Dr. Ergun Caner, the President of Liberty University’s Seminary, did not sign the document either due to the minimizing of the influence that evangelicals can have through politics and political endeavors.  Hate it or love it, The Evangelical Manifesto has made some noteworthy points that should be discussed and has made, in my opinion, an overall excellent job at defining evangelicals and the Biblical role that we as evangelical Christians should play in the world around us.  

The first quotes that I want to pass along come from the section of the manifesto focusing on the fact that evangelicals have failed to live out what they have claimed to preach:

“We confess that we evangelicals have betrayed our beliefs by our own behavior.  All to often we have trumpeted the gospel of Jesus, but we have replaced biblical truths with therapeutic techniques, worship with entertainment, discipleship with growth in human potential, church growth with business entrepreneurialism, concern for the church and the local congregation with expressions of the faith that are churchless and little better than vapid spirituality, meeting real needs with pandering to felt needs, and mission principles with marketing precepts.  In the process we have become known for commercial, diluted, and feel-good gospels of health, wealth, human potential, and religious happy talk, each of which is indistinguishable from the passing fashions of the surrounding world.” - p. 11

The manifesto states above that we have taken the message of the gospel, which we have been called to embrace personally first and foremost and then to embody to the world, and have exchanged it for false gospels which come in many forms.  This is so true and convicting at the same time.  The manifesto then goes on to address the spiritual condition that many evangelicals find themselves:

“All to often we have traced our roots to powerful movements of spiritual revival and reformation, but we ourselves are often atheists unawares, secularists in practice who live in a world without windows to the supernatural, and often carry our Christian lives in a manner that has little operational need for God.” - p. 12

Our false gospels that we have created leave no need for the true gospel.  If our whole spiritual lives are based on our own good works and performance or spiritual activities, we have no need for God because we have our acts together.  

The manifesto then goes on to describe what a holistic discipleship of embracing and embodying the gospel would look like in today’s world:

“We call for a more complete understanding of discipleship that applies faith with integrity to every calling and sphere of life, the secular as well as the spiritual, and the physical as well as the religious; and that thinks wider than politics in contributing to the arts, the sciences, the media, and the creation of culture in all its variety.” - p. 14

This is the call made by The Evangelical Manifesto to embrace and embody a holistic gospel that impacts culture through contributing in all spheres of life driven by a Christ-centered worldview. 

Last night I finally got a chance to go and see Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. This is a documentary that I had been wanting to see ever since I saw the trailer.  For those unfamiliar with the movie, Expelled presents the story of how the scientific world of academia is leading people who have come to this conclusion that biological evolution might not be the only answer to the questions of biology and origins to be expelled from their jobs and places of influence.  This new movement is called intelligent design (ID).  ID is different from creationism in that ID only suggests that there is some form of intelligent force that was involved in the origins of the universe.  A creationist would take the concept of ID one step further in stating that this intelligent force was God.  Due to this focus on the expulsion of individuals who are opposing the status quo of darwinism, Expelled has a very political and sociological message.  It does not deal with the scientific evidence or seek to answer the question of whether darwinism or ID is the true and factually based ideology.  The movie just focuses on the suppression of the freedom of speech that the ID proponents are said to be experiencing.

There were some good points that the movie made, but overall, I was greatly disappointed.  I was excited to see the interviews that had been seen in the previews with radical atheist, Dr. Richard Dawkins, and some prominent Christian apologists including Dr. John Lennox and Alister McGrath. The movie interviews presented the fact very clearly that this is not merely a discussion of scientific theories but that each side represents its own worldview.  This was a good point to make in that all scientists no matter how “objective” and “open minded” they claim to be come to the table with certain biases and preconceived notions from their own personal worldviews. This helps to clear up the perspective that scientists so often seek to present that they are completely unbiased when they came to their own view of evolution while the ID proponents came to their decision in favor of ID only due to their own personal biases against evolution.  This was a very good point made by the film.  

Another interesting item presented in the film came from Ben Stein’s question of: If their is not an intelligent designing force that began the universe, then how do you suppose that the universe came into being?  Two of the scientists responded to this question specifically with an answer besides the common one of having “no idea.”  One of these proposed that life formed from a chemical reaction that took place on the back of a crystal that sparked life as we know it.  The second, Dr. Richard Dawkins, attempted to explain his theory of origins.  In this theory, he proposes that there is a possibility that life was brought to the earth from life that existed on another planet in our solar system.  This is a theory that sounds very much like aliens but is presented in a very scientific sounding fashion that makes this odd theory seem more intellectually feasible.  Ben Stein then presents these theories as absurd in comparison to the theory of ID.  These theories were clearly minimized and not given much credence in the film, but personally, I do not believe that these theories are any more than creative attempts to avoid acknowledging the clear signs of an intelligent designer in the world around us.

The movie, despite these interesting interviews, present something that hurt the position of the movie in an attempt at an easy shot against the evolutionist camp. The perfect atrocity to blame on an opposing ideology is the holocaust.  The horrible slaughter of many lives overseen by Hitler and the Nazi regime is the nail in the coffin to an opposing ideologies camp.  This was the attempt made by Expelled - an attempt to blame Hitler’s motivation for the holocaust on the philosophy of darwinism.  Human directed natural selection could be seen as an extreme result of this philosophy being fully embraced but the fact that this was the driving factor is hard to prove.  It could also be said that Hitler used the religious convictions of the Christians to turn them against the Jews in the holocaust due to the fact that the Jews are the people who murdered Jesus.  This argument was not appropriate due to the fact that the intentions of Hitler in his leadership of the Nazi regime cannot be specifically pinpointed to a specific ideology since many ideologies could be taken to extremes (in the case of darwinism) or out of context (in the case of Christianity) to attempt to justify the holocaust in the minds of the Nazi people.  Expelled did not just present this idea as a possibility but desired to drive it home as fact through some random interviews along with a step-by-step journey down the halls to a gas chamber of a death camp.  This was the primary argument that evolution needs to be stopped.  

This movie that began arguing for a free exchange of ideas in the scientific community ended with a call to stop the spread of the darwinism due to the fact that it was the cause of the holocaust.  I think that this is a step that is to far to take.  This movie began with a worthy premise but ended with a cheap shot in order to take advantage of unthinking minds.  All this to say, I am not a darwinist but rather a proponent of not only ID but of a Creator who spoke the world into existence and formed humans from the dust of the earth and breathed into them the very breath of life.  I do not think that Expelled did an adequate job addressing the topic that it set out to address and ended up taking cheap shots in the process.  

So if you saw the movie, what do you think?