Eat/Love/Pray: Jesus and Christians

I love Jesus. I love him because he knew how to love, I love him because he hung out with ordinary people rather than the religious crew, I love him because he had an awesome connection with his father, I love him because I believe he gave his life for me and I love him because he isn't a phonie.

But sometimes I really dislike christians...

Now you might be thinking, hold up a sec Ellie, you're a christian, what gives you the right to 'diss your own peeps? So, before I go any further I must state that I know plenty of awesome christians and many of them are like family to me. However, I can understand why people are so disillusioned with us. For example, this week, a church in America decided to have a 'Burn the Quran' Day - how does this show love for our neighbor? Not only is it incredibly disrespectful but it is also unkind and, in my opinion, ungodly. I know christians who help out at soup kitchens but won't invite a homeless person round for dinner, I know christians who oppose a National Health Service that will provide free health care to some of the poorest families in the United States, simply because it will allow abortions and treat homosexuals. There are christians who still get hot under the collar about mixed-raced marriages.

And it's not just in America, I see a lack of love in my own home church. Many people will give generously to outreaches in Africa but insult and judge the poor on their doorstep, I see us smother vulnerable non-christians with jargon and resources, essentially bible-bashing them into the kingdom without attempting to befriend them. I see us preach love from the platform but send bitchy texts late on a Sunday evening, I see teenagers being dissuaded from attending university and certain sixth-form colleges because they will be mixing with people who drink and sleep around without thinking that it's in those situations that Jesus, the man we all want to be like, thrived. I see people becoming so consumed with church life that they have become irrelevant in the real world. I know people who no longer socialise with people who aren't christians and prefer to dwell in the safe christian bubble rather than face the challenges of our secular society.

Before you go away thinking that my experience of church and christians conforms to the typical stereotype, I must insist that many of us are aware of these issues and are doing what we can to change them. My friend Liam recently talked about loving people rather than consistently trying to convert them. He really spoke what was on my heart. I know there are times when I mess up too but I'm confident that God is gracious and that my heart is generally pointed in the right direction. I'm pretty sure that most of my non-church friends will tell you that I have never forced my faith onto any of them and I hope they would say that I have loved them with every fibre in my being, not because I was told to, but because I wanted to. In that way, I believe I can be Jesus to them. I often say that I have a faith rather than I'm religious because I can't stand religiosity. I am more concerned about a person's soul than their sexual orientation, I would rather a person got drunk every saturday but was deeply passionate about loving Jesus than them be teetotal and completely heartless.

I am proud of my relationship with Jesus but I am not always proud to be a christian. But I guess at the end of the day, christians are, like everyone else, human. They make mistakes, I make mistakes, we all make mistakes; everyone strays from their moral compasses from time to time and, as you can see from this post, I tend to judge christians more than I judge any other group of people. That in itself isn't a particularly positive character trait of mine. In some ways I'm rather like the protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye: I'll put up with any sort of crap as long as it's genuine, but I really don't want to associate myself with phonies.