“I had a friend that…got born again and evangelical, and it broke my heart.”

Bad Christian Parents

After the focus groups were complete, I spoke with the facilitator, Susan Saurage-Altenloh. I wanted to hear her personal insights on the project. When I asked if anything surprised her, she replied that she was taken aback by the impact of parents. The habits they set with their children deeply impacted individuals as they grew into adulthood and start having their own children, more often than not in a negative way. “I wanted to go back and talk to an awful lot of mothers and fathers,” she said. The men and women she talked with “were individuals who were formerly engaged in a relationship with their church or their faith and who had turned away. They might still maintain a spiritual nature. They have appreciation and respect for the spiritual existence out there, but they have turned away or never been involved with the church. Most of them had turned away and were…fighting a lot of experiences.”

If you are a Christian reading this, these realizations should make us more compassionate and understanding toward people who display strong and even emotional opposition to Christianity. For some, their past experience has so hurt them that they see the Christian faith as something unhealthy, unwanted, even evil. As you read the remainder of this blog series and the passionately negative comments about Christians and Christianity, recognizing some of the hurt behind these remarks may help you to listen differently.

People who have had painful experiences with religion tend to engage on an emotional level, and their pain makes their beliefs highly compelling. Christians who lack firsthand experience of those hurts tend to engage on a philosophical and theoretical level. Their responses are usually more truthful than helpful because they are received as anything but emotional, relational, and charitable. And the worst response we can offer is to show offense or anger. That only reinforces a person’s fear and pain. I have been guilty of that, and Susan’s insight has helped me see that. My goal is to serve, engage, and endure with the valuable people God has created, meeting their intensity with love. God does that with me. He puts up with a lot.

This project is a labor of love amid the demands of being a husband, father, and pastor. But, I believed that I have a lot to learn on how to help speak to the real issues of people’s lives and what I learn could help others. The questions that drove apologetics in the last century occupy fewer and fewer minds and hearts. If we are answering questions that people are no longer asking, we are wasting time. We are off-mission. We need to come to grips with the fact that we have lost many of the battles of the culture wars. Learning how we can better be loving messengers of biblical Christianity is better than denying that we can love better, or wrongly thinking that the best way to love people is to edit God’s Word. God commissioned Christians to be His messengers and not His editors.