I simply don’t get it. Some people are so offended by Christianity that they think it is Christianity that is a threat to their freedom. I saw this OpEd piece a while ago and resisted the urge to respond to it then, but I can’t hold out any longer. You needn’t read the entire piece to get a flavor of what is being said, here’s the introductory paragraph:

While traveling recently in my home “Red State” of Virginia, I was confronted by yet another sign of rising religious extremism in America. It was the “Jesus Fish”, those stick-on symbols of sectarianism signifying ardent devotion to Christianity. It struck me that they are reproducing at an alarming rate.

I hate those fish symbols too but for a very different reason. They are by no stretch of the imagination “symbols of sectarianism signifying ardent devotion to Christianity.” Any bozo can buy one at a Christian book/trinket store and I’ve even seen them at truck stops. They mean exactly nothing. I remember hearing of people putting them on their cars because they thought that if the cop was a Christian it might get them out of a ticket. I’ll explain my disdain for the fish symbols in a minute.

So what triggered me to write about this now? I saw a couple of videos that Doc Misterio linked to that tried to draw a contrast between being a Christian (the kind that has the fish on the back of the car) and being a “Christ Follower” which is supposed to be better. Each video ends with “Christian No More.” I went to the church’s website to investigate and found more of the same “that was then and it wasn’t good” kind of approach. The really, really ironic thing is the church is called “Community Christian Church”! Ha. Guess they’re due for a name change, right?

Now I agree with Community Christian-No-More Church that a lot of their experiences weren’t helpful. The big burly guy telling kids not to run in church (Big Burly Guy, knock it off, that’s my job!) ¹Just for the record, kids running in church is neither Christian nor unChristian. It is a matter of wisdom. There is typically a lot of coffee and a fair number of older people in churches. You don’t want a little kid running into either one and winding up with either on the ground or all over them. Come on. Being told that upon conversion you have to get rid of your CDs and DVDs. That kind of stuff.

What both the OpEd author Glenn A. Kirk and Community Christian-No-More Church are reacting to is not Christianity but the cultural litter that attends it. As I said above, any yutz with $1.50 can stick a fish symbol on their car. Apparently one family with Cadillac SUV had $7.50 to dole out since they had five on their car. That garbage is neither a mark of strict adherence nor a badge of advanced spirituality. It is cheap and easy to come by. True discipleship comes at a cost that is a lot more than $1.50. To make that point, consider the history behind the fish symbol. The Greek word for ‘fish’ is “ichthys”. The reason that is a Christian symbol is because it is also an acronym for the phrase “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior”. Early Christians used it as a code so they could identify each other. They needed it because to be a Christian meant that you were under threat of arrest and execution (remember the Coliseum? Christians and lions and all that?) So really, Kirk has nothing to fear from fish stickers. Christians are not going to take over America. That would require a lot more risk and work than most fish-symbol-users are willing to exert.

So what about the other reaction? Since Christian doesn’t mean “Christ follower” any more, lets ditch it and distance ourselves from the term, right? Well, no. Don’t forget, ‘Christian’ isn’t just a cultural phenomena, it is a Biblical term. Check Acts 11:26, 26:28 and 1Pt 4:16. Like it or not, that is who we are. Instead of ditching the term, how about if we retain it and make it mean something once again? Instead of having people hate us for Republican politics, how about if they hate us because by our love we make them look as bad as they are? How about if they hate us because we believe and follow Jesus in the ways that Jesus commanded in the Bible rather than the silly, petty ways we’ve picked up? “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Not by t-shirts, bumper stickers or music. We need to live in the culture we are surrounded by not as members of that culture, but as ambassadors of a King and a kingdom, not in our own ghetto.

Added: Oh yea, I forgot to mention this. A good example of Christians acting like Christians was the Katrina clean up. Without the church, who, by the way, is still down there cleaning up, New Orleans and vicinity would be in a lot worse condition than it currently is. I don’t hear Mr. Kirk whining about that. You see, this is the kind of thing we need to be doing. They know that we’re Christians, we don’t need to have a fish on our bumper or yell the gospel at them.

Another Added: I do not mean to say that everyone with a fish on their car is a lazy, good for nothin’ Christian. My point was simply that the symbol can be employed by anyone and it is not an indication of much. To claim that anyone who has one is a fake is to make the same mistake Community Christian-No-More Church is making with their broad brush strokes. Sorry.