In their unvarnished look at how Christians are perceived by others (mainly, those outside the Christian faith), authors David Kinnamon and Gabe Lyons (unChristian) highlight the issue of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, of course, is when the walk doesn’t measure up to the talk. Their survey data shows that among 16 to 29 year olds outside the Christian faith (in the U.S.), 85% think Christians are hypocrites. Fifty four percent characterize that quality as strongly describing Christians. I suspect most Christians will deny such a charge, but it’s just this morally superior attitude that brings the hypocrisy charge in the first place.
Of course, hypocrisy is not the sole domain of Christians. I saw a great example of this yesterday as I was watching Deborah Scranton’s TED conference (March 2007) presentation on the web. Ms. Scranton was the director of the award-winning documentary The War Tapes. Powerful and unsettling, the raw material for this documentary was provided by a National Guard unit given video cameras for their tour in Iraq. She talked about the disconnect people have about the war, and their difficulty in talking about it (mainly for fear that it is too much of a hot button). And she shared how at one talk she gave, a guy hung around to talk with her—obviously an ex-soldier.
A soldier came up to me and stood, you know, really, pretty close—a foot away from me—and he’s a big guy. And he looked at me, and I smiled, and then I saw the tears start welling up in his eyes. And he wasn’t gonna blink. And he said, my gunner was throwing candy—and I knew what he was gonna say. The gunner was throwing candy—they used to throw candy to the kids. Kids got too close, very often. And he said, I killed a child. And I’m a father. I have children. I haven’t been able to tell my wife, I’m afraid she’s gonna think I’m a monster. I hugged him, of course, and I said it’s gonna be OK. And he said, I’m gonna bring her to see your film. And then I’m gonna tell her.
So, when I talk about a disconnect, it’s not only for maybe those people who don’t know a soldier. Which there obviously are—you know, these days, it’s not like World War Two where there was a war front, and a home front, and everybody seemed involved. You can go for days here and not feel like there’s a war going on. And often I’ll hear people say, you know, who maybe know that I did this film and they say, oh, you know, I’m against the war but I support the soldiers. And I’ve started to ask them well, that’s nice, what are you doing? Are you volunteering at a VA? You go and see anybody? Do you, if you find out your neighbor’s been, do you, you know, spend some time, not necessarily ask questions, but see if they want to talk? Do you give money to any of the charities that—you know obviously like Dean Kamen’s working on that amazing thing—but there’s charities where you can sponsor computers for wounded soldiers.
I think—I challenge us to say—to operationalize those terms when we say we support someone, you know? Are you a friend to them? Do you really care? And I would just say it’s my hope, and I would ask you guys, to please, you know, reach out a hand, and really do give them a hug.
So did you catch it? The phrase, support our troops? And the conversation stopper question, “Exactly how are you doing that?”
Christians voice a similar phrase, Hate the sin, love the sinner. The hate the sin part is pretty clear; the love the sinner part needs work.
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