Judgmentals vs. Bad Christians

I talked with a friend today who spoke honestly and made perfectly good sense, though I disagreed with him. He told me that he is a Christian but does not often make that fact known to people because he is such a bad Christian. He said he doesn't want to be a bad witness. He thought the Bible backed him up on this, I didn't really know either way, but nevertheless I thought his efforts were good intentioned.

What could drive a person to deny their Christianity? My first guess would have to be the amount of pressure and judgment that comes from Christian communities to conform to Christian values and behaviors. I do not mean to generalize all Christian communities. However, I do know from experience that there are those few Judgmentals who conceal themselves within such communities only to drive people away at times when they are most vulnerable.

I am not innocent of being judgmental either. There are many stages of my life when I have been full of arrogance and pride such that practically nothing could escape my critique. So, I sympathize with the Judges. However, when I am on the receiving end of their narrow-minded “observations,” I get severely hurt by them. There is no love in judgment, no matter how nicely someone words it. And no matter how Biblical the critique, when the speaker does not listen and understand to whom he is speaking, then his truthful words turn to mere insults of character.

I wonder if this is why my friend has chosen to not bring shame on Christianity by denying his part in it. Perhaps he has had the “truth” spoken to him too many times, rather than others listening to the truth about him. As such, it makes perfectly good sense that a good person would deny their Christian faith to save the face of those who so strongly protect it. In reality, I fear that my friend is only protecting the pride of those Judgmentals who drove him away (“spoke the truth”) in the first place.

In either case, I think my friend points out a helpful flaw in Christian culture. We need to accept those who are less than perfect as though they are in fact perfect. We should not fake or conceal their imperfection either. Rather, we should embrace the person, as though they were family and had nothing to prove by their behavior or values. We should be freeing each other by listening rather than speaking and believing in each other rather than allowing the Judgmentals to win.

I would feel much better about being a Christian if this were true of my community.