Ugly Christians

When I was younger, I sometimes heard a parent telling an older sibling to stop being “ugly” toward a younger sibling, to stop being mean and unkind to a younger brother or sister and causing the younger sibling to cry. I do not hear parents using that expression here in Kentucky. I did hear it in Louisiana when I lived there. 

Brandon Cox’s article, “15 Reasons People Are Disillusioned with the American Evangelical Church,” Andrew Linder’s article, “Helping Your Kids Avoid Negative Christianity” and Stacey Sauls’ article, “Make Christianity Beautiful Again” confirm a number of my own observations. The expression being “ugly” may describe the way some individuals who identify themselves as Christians act toward other people, both those who identify themselves as Christians and those who do not. In their formation as disciples of Jesus the importance of being winsome in their witness, “wise as serpents and gentle as doves,” was omitted or went unlearned. The appellation “ugly Christian” fits them. Whether they can be regarded as disciples of Jesus is open to question.

Wikipedia offers us a very telling definition of disciple:

In Christianity disciple primarily refers to a dedicated follower of Jesus. This term is found in the New Testament only in the Gospels and Acts. In the ancient world, a disciple is a follower or adherent of a teacher. It is not the same as being a student in the modern sense. A disciple in the ancient biblical world actively imitated both the life and teaching of the master. It was a deliberate apprenticeship which made the fully formed disciple a living copy of the master.

Some who describe themselves as Christians resemble living copies of Jesus’ principal critics—the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, not Jesus himself. They are deserving of the name, “ugly Christian.” Others show negligible influence of Jesus in their lives. They also are deserving of that appellation.

If we examine the way that we think and act, we may discover that we too are deserving of the same appellation. We are “ugly Christians.” We are highly critical of other people, but we make all kinds of excuses for ourselves and other members of our tribe. We are extremely argumentative and have harsh, dismissive words for those who do not agree with us. We are not content just to present our views. We must put down other people and their views. We pass judgment on people on the flimsiest evidence at best. We do not investigate the facts of the matter. We let our prejudices and presumptions color our judgment. Jesus gave us a new commandment, "Love one another." But we choose to hate and despise our fellow Christians and see no wrong in what we are doing.

We read articles, hear podcasts, and watch videos on the internet, which tell us that one of the reasons church attendance is falling is that “cultural Christians” are dropping out of local churches in large numbers. “Cultural Christians” are individuals who are nominally Christian but whose main reasons for attending a local church was that it provided them with certain benefits in the culture in which they lived, for example, respectability. Church attendance, however, no longer provides them with these benefits so they see no reason to attend a local church.

I would hazard that “cultural Christians” are not the only group of nominal Christians who have been occupying a pew in a local church or a seat on its platform. While local churches may have lost some members of this second group during the pandemic, other members of the group remain in the local church. They may even form all the church leaders, church members, and regular attendees of a particular local church. These individuals may believe that they are Christians, but they are not disciples of Jesus. They are not actively imitating both the life and teaching of Jesus. They are not becoming a living copy of Jesus. They have become arrested in their spiritual development.

A number of reasons may account for why this has happened. I believe that we can safely conclude in a local church where the congregation of the church is not in a state of arrested spiritual development, we will find a mixture of people at various stages in their formation and growth as disciples of Jesus. Individuals will be moving through each stage. The church will be like a living organism. It also will be growing. Depending upon its circumstances, it may be growing numerically. Most importantly, it will be growing spiritually. It will be having an impact upon the neighborhood or community in which it is located.

Among the factors that can get a local church on the wrong track are cultural and ideological views particular to one segment of the population. In the past these influences would have been relatively isolated, but the internet has enabled them to spread. They may be given a religious veneer. Their adherents may appropriate religious terminology. Behind this façade, however, it is these cultural and ideological views that are the guiding principles of a local church, not the life and teaching of Jesus. The teaching of the Bible and even the life and teaching of Jesus may be twisted to support such views. Rather than being dedicated followers of Jesus, the church leaders, church members, and regular attendees of a church where such views are the guiding principles are adherents of the selfsame views.

This phenomenon is not confined to conservatives or liberals. It is found the entire length of the spectrum. Rather than Jesus’ life and teaching shaping our thinking and actions, a particular culture and ideology are shaping them. Rather than spreading the gospel, making disciples, baptizing them, and forming them as dedicated followers of Jesus, we are propagating a culture and an ideology, which may be far removed from how Jesus lived and what he taught.

A second factor is a particular local church may have the wrong idea of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It may catechize and instruct members of its congregation in a particular set of beliefs which, while they may to some extent be derived from Jesus’ life and teaching, are largely church tradition. The result may be an inadequate or distorted perception of discipleship. Members of the congregation may be led to believe that that in accepting the church’s teachings, regularly attending services of the church, receiving the sacraments, giving alms (e.g., supporting the operation of the church and making donations to charitable organizations), and avoiding what the church views as immoral behavior, they are following Jesus wherein fact they are following church tradition. One may hear the specious argument that there is nothing wrong with following church tradition since what we know about Jesus’ life and teaching has been handed down from one generation to another in the form of written tradition in the Bible. This argument seeks to give the same weight if not greater weight to what the church teaches as it does what the Bible teaches on the flimsy premise that both are tradition. Jesus in his own teaching warned against using a particular group’s traditions to disregard or ignore the teaching of the Bible.

While we may tend to associate this view of tradition with Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, it is also found in mainline Protestant, evangelical, and charismatic churches. While clergy may give lip services to the authority of the Bible, they in practice give more weight to a particular theological tradition or their own idiosyncratic views. The result may be a local church to which members of the community in which the church is located and members of surrounding communities flock to hear a top notch praise band and a celebrity preacher on Sundays and to experience an emotional high, only to return to their homes and live their lives during the week no different from their non-churchgoing neighbors except that they listen to contemporary Christian and praise and worship music and watch videos of celebrity preachers to maintain that high. They may talk a lot about how much they love Jesus, but their lives do not embody the love that they maintain that they have for Jesus.

A third factor is a particular church may not offer the kind of apprenticeship that a seeker needs to become a full-fledged disciple of Jesus. The process for forming disciples is patchy and hit-and-miss. It is not reliably good or successful.

All three factors may contribute to a state of arrested spiritual development in a local church. Instead of producing dedicated followers of Jesus, the church produces more “ugly Christians.”

“Ugly Christians” can further damage the reputation of a local church and the reputation of Christianity in a neighborhood or community which has already seen more than its share of “ugly Christians.” Their “ugliness” overshadows and undermines the witness of dedicated followers of Jesus, those who are doing their best with the help of God’s grace to be living copies of Jesus, to embody his love for God and his love for us, and to make more fully-fledged disciples.