revelation

I'm back. Hope to write a more personal entry later, but for now: Here's a few excerpts from the book UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity...And Why it Matters. I got back on Tuesday and read this book by the deadline today, so its pretty much all I've done during my free time.

The book is based on a three-year long study that the Barna Group did on the image problem Christianity has with young adult-America (basically our generation). They asked people to name the first things that come to mind when thinking of Christianity and each of the top 6 answers is a chapter in this book (hypocritical, 'get saved!', antihomosexual, sheltered, too political, and judgmental).

In the Hypocritical chapter:
"Our passion for Jesus should result in God-honoring, moral lifestyles, not the other way around."


In the 'Get Saved!' chapter:
"Myth: The best evangelism efforts are those that reach the most people at once.
Fact: The most effective efforts to share faith are interpersonal and relationship based. When we asked born-again Busters (name of our generation) to identify the activity, ministry event, or person most directly responsible for their decision to accept Jesus Christ, 71 percent listed an individual -- typically their parent, friend, another relative, or a teacher. A majority of those decisions were described as conversations and prayer, while about one-third were instances in which their friend or family member took them to a church service or an evangelistic event. In an era of mass media, it is easy to believe that the more eyeballs, the more impact. But radio, television, and tracts accounted for a combined total of less than one-half of 1 percent of the Busters who are born again."

"One of the things I do when I meet people is ask them, 'What is Christianity?' Undoubtedly half will respond, 'A relationship with Jesus.'
That is wrong. The gospel cannot be merely a private transaction. God didn't break through history, through time and space, to come as a babe, be incarnated, and suffer on the cross just so you can come to him and say, 'Oh, I accept Jesus and now I can live happily ever after.' That's not why he came....Jesus came as a radical to turn the world upside down. When we believe it is just about Jesus and yourself, we miss the point."

In the Antihomosexual chapter:
"'Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in the light of what they suffer.' - Dietrich Bonhoeffer"

"I am not asked to impersonate the Holy Spirit but to live a life that gives off God's fluorescence."

In the Sheltered chapter:
"We were made to be lovers, bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home."

In the Judgmental chapter:
"When Donald Trump becomes the poster boy for second chances and the church is viewed as a place of judgment...we have a serious problem."

Then finally the last chapter was on the hope for new perceptions in the future:

"I have faith that in the future we will make better decisions on what issues we think are important. When we stand up for something and draw a line in the sand we will know that it is clearly for the cause of Christ and not for some political, religious, or self-serving agenda. We will pick the hills we die on more wisely and choose to go to battle a little less often. And when we stand up for something, we will take our two favorite companions: grace and love. They will stand on the left and right of us. And we would never be so foolish or unwise as to ever journey without them."