And You Call Yourself a Christian?
The Evangelical Hypocrisy Trap
I was not raised in the church. As a teenager I was dragged to a church, but it wasn’t evangelical, and we never brought it home. I later became a convert — one of those people evangelicals evangelize to. Though to be honest, no one had actually done that to me. I had just attended a meeting of the campus Baptist Student Union (BSU) out of curiosity, kept coming back, and quickly absorbed the message taught there.
All I had to do was confess that I was a sinner, repent, and accept Jesus as my savior. Then I would be guaranteed to have eternal life and spend eternity in heaven.
What was not to like?
A False Promise
At first, my decision for Christ was a blessing. As a new freshman, I now had an instant social group in the BSU. We met weekly to sing, share, and learn. We held Bible studies and prayer groups.
Gradually, however, I learned that this was not all there was to it. Christians were called to become disciples of Christ. And this discipleship required a serious commitment.
In the same way any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple — Luke 14:33.
What did that mean, give up everything you have? It meant giving up everything you loved more than Jesus. Was there anything in your life that was getting in the way of your walk with Christ? Did you hang out with friends who were not saved and who engaged in “unholy” activities? Did you have a career plan that may conflict with what god wanted for your life? Were your tennis games getting in the way of your Bible study or prayer group schedule? Did you choose watching a favorite TV show over reading the scriptures?
For adults, the list became more weighty. Did you choose your comfortable life over mission work? Did financing your vacation win out over your tithes? Did you allow your child to skip church because they hated it?
If you answered yes to any such questions, then you were holding out on god. There were parts of your life you were not sacrificing to him. Therefore you were not worthy of being Jesus’ disciple. If you called yourself a Christian while you were holding out on god, then you were a hypocrite! Being a Christian meant being a disciple of Christ. Disciples did not hold out on god.
Moreover, you were cheating god. You had accepted Jesus’ salvation, but when the bill came due, you were not paying it!
Bill? What bill?
Bond-Servants, Slaves, and Harvesters
What did this “discipleship” look like? What was it exactly, that we were supposed to be doing for god?
He said unto them, go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. — Mark 16:15
This was what it was all for. All the Bible studies, prayer, and fellowship was supposed to be preparing us to win souls for Christ, just as I had been “won.”
So we were to invite people to the BSU meetings. Or share the plan of salvation to them personally. Even if they didn’t accept Christ right away you would have planted a seed that could sprout in them later. We were to be laborers in god’s soul fields, planting and harvesting souls for heaven.
This was to be our entire purpose and destiny in life. For this purpose we were to be prepared to forsake everything else in our lives — our secular goals, family, friends, activities, hobbies, dreams, money, and anything else that brought us joy.
We were to risk and sacrifice all our human relationships by telling everyone we knew or encountered about their need for Jesus’ forgiveness and the danger to their eternal souls if they died without it. Even if it meant losing friends, losing customers, fracturing families, or getting fired. We were not to try to hold on to our secular lives.
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. — Luke 9:23
So we were to deny our secular needs and desires, and instead spend our lives bringing in god’s soul harvest.
The Broken Promise
Needless to say, we sucked at it — me included. We fought every day to deny ourselves and devote ourselves entirely to getting closer to god, becoming better disciples, and working in his soul fields. But it seemed like every little step forward was followed by two back. The world, which we demonized as wicked, kept dragging us down.
Discouraged, I kept looking for that joy that the gospels and the New Testament promised would replace our secular lives. We were to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Serving god was supposed to feel even better than living a worldly, secular existence. The holy spirit was supposed to fill us, giving us confidence, power, and a peace that surpasses all understanding.
But it didn’t. Because it doesn’t.
If the holy spirit really did transform us from within, making us rejoice more in our relationship with Jesus than in our secular activities, no Christian would ever skimp on a tithe. No Christian would ever choose playing a video game over reading the scriptures or prayer. And no Christian would ever fail to proselytize everyone they knew or met, no matter what the consequences.
Hypocrite
So there we were, calling ourselves Christians but all the while holding back that part of us that would not surrender to god. This was the very definition of hypocrisy. And it was because of our little faith.
Despite my prayers, study of the scriptures, and fervent desire to love god with all my heart and soul, my mind was neither transformed nor renewed. Instead of joy and a peace that surpassed all understanding, I felt only frustration, guilt, and shame. Every time I had to force myself to do my discipleship duties instead of my secular obligations, or god forbid, something fun, I was besieged by guilt. And every time I failed to proselytize to my friends and acquaintances, I pictured them in hell, blaming me for not telling them about how to get to heaven.
Various evangelical leaders are very aware of this failing. I have never met an evangelical believer who claimed to have fully met the criteria for discipleship. This hypocrisy and guilt is a reliable lever that evangelical leaders and teachers pull when they need it.
Tithes low? Pews looking empty? How many people have you witnessed to or invited to church lately? Why has no one volunteered for that mission trip? Do you really love god? Because you profess to, but your actions betray otherwise. Pastors sometimes even insinuate that this hypocrisy and failure in discipleship threatens the believers’ very salvation, and there are plenty of Bible verses to back this up.
Because if we really loved god, we would give him what we owed him.
Bait and Switch
The fact is, evangelicalism lies to us. I wouldn’t know about what gets taught to kids who grow up in evangelical churches, but as someone who was proselytized, I know I was lied to. I was told you can’t work to earn your salvation. You don’t have to earn it. It’s free.
And that’s a lie.
Grace is not free. Just because you pay nothing for it up front doesn’t mean there’s not a hell of bill coming afterwards. They didn’t tell me that part. If they had, I would have said “no” to all of it from the outset.
Deconversion
The pressure to evangelize was the main force that drove me out of Christianity and eventually to agnosticism. It was apparent to me that god was more disgusted with me as a Christian than he had been before I was a believer. As a non-believer I had at least not been a failure and a hypocrite.
I also realized that I had started to envy non-believers. They were living their lives without guilt. They seemed happier. Every day was not a struggle, every hour not a fight between what they wanted or needed to do and what they believed god wanted them to do.
And contrary to evangelicals’ assertion that non-believers live selfishly, only fulfilling their own desires, I found that many of them demonstrated more concern and support for others than my Christian friends did. Non-believers did not abandon those who depended upon them in order to go off and serve some god. Sometimes I wondered what happened to the original 12 disciples’ families. Did they starve because their breadwinner left them? Were their children left to grow up without fathers? Did that guy’s father ever get buried? (Matthew 10:37)
As for sharing the gospel, why would I want to put such a millstone of guilt and hypocrisy around someone else’s neck? And for what? For me, the prospect of a life spent in god’s soul fields was too dismal to contemplate. And yet I was supposed to push that future on someone else?
This god was easily capable of proclaiming himself to his entire creation, but instead chose to dump that responsibility upon his puny, struggling human creations, and to demand a tribute of their whole lives to do it.
This was not love. It was more like predation. Recognizing this was a critical step to waking up and eventually freeing myself from its grasp.
