Ok, so far, we’ve given up the capital ‘C’ attitude of Christianity, we’re agreed that humility should be strongly considered, as  followers of Christ and we know many non-believers think we are judgemental, hypocritical and homophobic.  So, now what?  Assuming this alarms you, assuming you would like people outside the faith to at least like us, give Christianity a chance, maybe…

Where do we go from here?

 On more than one occasion (ok, two, actually), many years ago – in complete innocence and ignorance, and not meaning to offend anyone at all – you guessed it, I offended someone. This was long ago, when my own faith was tentative at best, and I had little knowledge of Jesus, the Bible, general Christianity, any of that.  In response to a conversation, each time, that indicated they thought Jesus was a great teacher and and prophet and an all-around cool guy, just not the Son of God, I said “Oh, so you are not a Christian?”

This was highly offensive both times I said it. Since then I have learned that many people have many different ideas about what Christianity means.

So to me it is clear that non-believers don’t define the word ‘Christian’ the same way that we do.  I mean, I know we can fight it, try to educate everyone that ‘Christian’ indicates that you are a follower of Jesus and His teachings – which include that he is the Son of God and part of the Trinity. But maybe when we use the often proclaimed phrase  “God meets us where we’re at” (misplaced preposition duly noted), well maybe we take a page out of that book on this, and meet those outside the faith ‘where they’re at’.

So what if they don’t think being a Christian requires the complete package, the total set of beliefs? Meet them where they’re at on their journey. At least they think Jesus was a cool guy and he taught about love. We can all agree on that!

Isn’t that a good enough place to start?

Come back next time for part two of ‘What’s a Christian to do?’