Life as a Christian Woman

There are certain things that you can count on occuring during Holy Week, the week that leads up to Easter Sunday:

Television networks will schedule the annual showing of “The Ten Commandments.” (Moses, an Easter tradition… who knew?)

• Churches will be on overload with extra seating, orchestral music, sunrise services.
• Normally sane parents will buy their kids ducks and chicks dyed pink and green.
• Stores will see an increase in the sale of women’s hats and fancy “Easter” dresses.
• Children will be eating chocolate Easter bunnies on Sunday afternoon.
• And one of the major news magazines will run a cover story heralding the death of Christianity.

Over the years we have seen articles asking if Jesus ever existed, if Christianity is just mythology on steroids, and the most famous headline “Is God Dead.”

Newsweek’s cover this week blares in red type “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Inside, the headline is even more bleak: The End of Christian America.

Wow.

We have talked here before about how this nation does appear to be moving into a post-Christian time. (Click here to read “Are We a Post-Christian Nation” from November 11, 2008). But what exactly does that mean? The article cites polls that show that people who identify themselves as Christians has fallen 10% in the last two decades. That’s a big drop. When you are about winning souls to the kingdom, finding out that many are turning their backs and walking away is not what you want to hear.

The focus of the article is not on whether Christianity is a dying faith. Rather it seeks to show that Christianity is no longer a major player in social and political life in America. The author, Jon Meacham, sees this as a good thing, believing that our political climate is charged enough without seeking to foist certain beliefs on everyone.

Somewhere, I fear, we have lost our soul.

We have become such a society of “inclusion” that the word has taken on a life of its own. There sometimes seems to be no right or wrong, just right and “those who never caught a break.” For every crime, for every sin, there seems to be an excuse that justifies, or at least attempts to soften, the evil.

Inclusion is a good thing. Jesus was himself inclusive. He didn’t see color, age, religion, or sex. He saw all as people he loved equally. But he also called sin, and sinners, out. We often forget that on Jesus’ visit to the Temple after entering Jerusalem, he called out the Pharisees for what they were doing… using God’s temple for profit:

¹⁵On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, ¹⁶and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. ¹⁷And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written:
” ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

¹⁸The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

Mark 11:15-18

Jesus called them on their sin, and immediately the leaders knew he was a threat to them, and that he had to go (which, of course, fulfilled the prophecy from the Old Testament).

Today, when Christians speak out against sin, many times we are reviled, called rigid and uncompromising. But while Jesus calls us to “include” all, he at no point compromised when it came to sin.

We may indeed live in a nation that is “post-Christian.” The signs are there. But that doesn’t mean that we should meekly hide inside our churches and let ourselves be erased out of the equation.

If we want Christian leadership, if we want Christian values, we need to stand up and say so. We need to vote, challenge, and cling to OUR rights. For while the percentage of those who call themselves Christian has dropped 10% in the last 20 years, that leaves more than 75% that still call themselves followers of Christ.

Seems like a majority to me!