One summer, while touring with the music festival Vans Warped Tour, I asked a young man when he’d become a Christian. We struck up a conversation waiting in line for catering, first gazing absently into our phone screens, only to grow bored. Eventually, we mustered the courage to ask the lame adage, “What do you do?” I told him about the work our non-profit did, and it surprised him that a Christian organization involved in mental health was at Warped Tour. Looking around the room, he confided in a low voice that he, too, was a Christian. Within the Warped Tour staffing, Christians are a minority and anomaly. We all know one another and often gather to pray or connect. Curious that I’d not met him before, I asked how long he’d been following the faith, assuming he was a newer Christian.

“Well, I was born into a Christian home in California.”

“And?” I asked incredulous.

“So that’s when I became a Christian!”

That was it. His entire explanation why he was a Christian revolved around being born in California to a Christian household. It was like hearing someone exclaim they were a Republican or Democrat because that’s the environment their parents raised them in. Baffled by the interaction, I asked similar and pointed question over the years to those who identified as “Christian.” Most in the pews of the church I found had wandered into a system of beliefs that resembled cultural conversion or therapeutic feel good relativism. Ultimately, this question explained why the Western church is a mess and why so many who claim the title “Christian” are bigoted, hypocritical, and judgmental.

The Cult of Feel Good Deism

Sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton coined the term “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” after interviews with 3,000 teenagers. What they discovered is that many of today’s youth view religion and Christianity under the following set of core beliefs:

God wants people to be nice and fair to one another. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. God doesn’t need to be involved in your life, unless something is going wrong and you need it resolved Good people go to heaven when they die

Most adults ascribe to this view of moral and therapeutic deism as well. God is a cosmic genie or butler who gives you Werther’s Original candies — much like your WWII vet grandad did — as long as you’re nice.

Orthodox Christian beliefs thus become whatever makes you feel good or makes you happy. When I say “orthodox” I don’t mean secondary or tertiary issues like “When was the Earth made? How about tattoos and alcohol? Do we have free will?” I mean essential core beliefs that define Christianity. Stuff like — Jesus was God and man, born of a virgin, died on a cross, resurrected, commands you to love your neighbor as yourself, instructs you to die to self, and asks that you create other followers.

The mark of today’s Christian, however, is you do you. Be happy and believe whatever you want. Just be nice to each other and you’ll reach the pearly gates. You may think I’m making this up, but in 2016, LifeWay Research confirmed the vast majority of self identifying Christians believed this, and 73% of America claims they’re Christians.

Image from Barna research on how American religiously identify

There’s one major problem with this thought process though. You can’t remove a few screws from a bicycle essential to holding it together without the bike falling apart. If Christianity is all about happiness, then what about those pesky orthodox beliefs? New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof questioned popular New York City pastor, Tim Keller, on why he couldn’t just accept Jesus as a nice guy and emulate his kindness, while still calling himself a Christian. Keller responded:

”If something is truly integral to a body of thought, you can’t remove it without destabilizing the whole thing. A religion can’t be whatever we desire it to be. If I’m a member of the board of Greenpeace and I come out and say climate change is a hoax, they will ask me to resign. I could call them narrow-minded, but they would rightly say that there have to be some boundaries for dissent or you couldn’t have a cohesive, integrated organization. And they’d be right. It’s the same with any religious faith.”

Most Christians Can’t Even Explain What They Believe

Here’s a fun trick to play on Christians, especially if you want to expose their hypocrisy. Just ask them,

“Please explain the Gospel.”

For those not of the Christian faith, the gospel is the defining belief by which all Christian traditions hinge their faith on (should you care for a more in-depth explanation, I’ve written a popular piece about that here). My moment of horror came the day I asked a group of twenty-somethings the question — what is the gospel? The mix of confusion, babbling, and absurd declarations were genuinely breathtaking. That they couldn’t explain the essential message of their faith meant they didn’t even know it to begin with. Instead, most I’ve encountered can tell you about their moral behavior or when they said a prayer to invite Jesus into their heart (which is nowhere in the Bible and makes no sense). In effect, it’s like we have an entire population of people who claim to have seen the movie The Goonies but can’t explain the plot — and when they do — it’s about a group of teens who fight a T-Rex.

So if you believe whatever you want, your utmost focus is on yourself, and you can’t explain what your faith teaches, is it any wonder why Christians in America kinda suck? For instance, here’s something to consider. A core tenet of Christianity is called “The Greatest Commandment.” In it, Jesus commands Christians to “love God and your neighbor as yourself.” He explains everything hangs on this simple, yet profound command. A religious expert then challenges him and asks, “Well, who’s my neighbor?”

Jesus tells a follow-up story that’s now become a pop culture reference entitled “The Good Samaritan.” The story goes that a man is traveling down a road, gets robbed, beaten, and left for dead. A priest and religious man pass him by, but a Samaritan stops and cares for him. Most people assume a Samaritan is someone who stops and does the right thing when others don’t. What everyone misses, however, is that a Samaritan was someone the Jews of antiquity reviled and hated. If we were to recreate the story in America today, it would be the equivalent of a white Klansman stopping to help an African-American member of Antifa. When Jesus asks “Which proved to be the neighbor?” the religious expert is so appalled he can’t even say the word “Samaritan.” Instead he says, “The one who showed mercy.”

In today’s culture, people believe “I don’t hate my neighbor, therefore I love them,” but that’s missing the point and not love either. The point of the commandment is that Christians are commanded to love and care for the very people they might despise. The same people who take everything they find holy and spit on it. Then Christ commands them to love their enemy the same way they’d want to be loved.

In my life, I know I want to be loved without judgement or condemnation. I want people to put up with my shortcomings. I want people with different beliefs to like me and not lash out because I think differently. I’m willing to bet you want to be loved the same way too. So how many Christians do you actually see doing that?

Course Correction

When I first became a Christian several years ago, there wasn’t an instantaneous change. I spent a few years getting hammered at the bar on weekends and hooking up with (or objectifying) women every chance I got. There’s always a learning curve when you’re new to something and you’ll need guides along the path. Several men loved me through multiple mistakes, idiotic remarks about “bitchez,” and general jackassery. Through their patience and kindness, they taught me to live in community, love God, and serve others which began a radical heart change. So much of my needs that were once the focus of my life, became about the needs of others.

I don’t blame newer Christians for doing dumb things, because I was once them. We don’t know any better. But imagine one day you go to splash pad for children and find a 50-year-old man having the time of his life with a bunch of kids. It’s like a scene straight out of Billy Madison where the guy is sitting on a splash jet saying “That’s nice.”

Scene from the movie Billy Madison

Most of us would call the cops believing he might be a pedophile. Or we’d assume the guy might have some mental issues. So when people claim to be Christians and then refuse to love people, judge and condemn them, and continue to act like children, they’re a lot like the old dude at the splash pad. It’s just sad and pathetic, not endearing.

Because of this constant Christian infancy we can see played out around us, the Western American church is in the last throes of its death song. You can easily see this as the mark of today’s Christian is constant outrage, especially if something involves politics. If someone says something you disagree with — don’t love them — just attack them. After all, it’s all about you according to our new Christian ideals. Most church services reinforce this focus on self. The vast majority of parishioners go to church to be entertained. If the music, sermon, or kids program isn’t to their flavor, they bounce to a place that “feeds them.” To keep numbers and donations coming, the church bends to the will of the congregation. So if the church reinforces a self-focus, then it's easy to judge and attack others because your needs matter most.

So what to do?

When people find out HeartSupport — the organization I work for and whose publication you’re reading — is a Christian organization they’re not surprised. We work in the mental health arena, but we’re pretty open about our faith. A large majority of our community is not Christian (including some of our writers) because we let them know “You’re our neighbor, and we love you regardless of your beliefs.” We don’t have requirements for who we help, either. When people see other people act in love like Christ that’s not a surprise. What’s a surprise to most people are Christians who — with their mouth praise a supposed loving God — then stab other people with the next words out of their lips. The disconnect between belief and action is so traumatic, the whole thing becomes laughable.

I’m not saying we do this right or we’re the example to follow because we’ve hurt our fair share of people too. There are no perfect organizations out there, let alone perfect people. But we are trying. We're trying to love people even when we blow it. And how you respond after screwing up — however minor — says a lot about the depth of your faith. Do you respond with love, gentleness, and an apology? Or a defensive posture? One shows you understand Christ’s great command, while the other is once more about how you’re perceived and self focused. Thus, the bad taste left in the mouth of those who interact with Christians has more to do with the fact Christians ignore this simple — yet great — command.

So, yes, Christianity isn’t quite “Christian” anymore. But as the West turns its back on those who look nothing like the man they follow, my hope is they’ll turn to meet men and women who do. And perhaps that will change their heart and this world.