Christians on the Playground

Do you remember being called any names when you were a child?

Kids on the playground at recess calling each other mean names is a pretty common happening, and all of us have probably undergone the heckling of classmates as some time in our past. For a lot of people, such experiences can even have a lasting impact on a their psyches. There are sorts of names out there to call people. Geek. Nerd. Four-eyes. Pizza-face. Moron. The list could go on.

When I was a kid, people called me by some pretty mean names too: Stud. Mister Awesome. The Incredible Hulk. The coolest kid in class. It was a pretty rough childhood, as you can tell.

In all seriousness though, no one likes to be called names. Because of this, we try our best to disassociate ourselves from such labels. "Hey man, I'm not a geek, ok? I just wear this Star Trek Deep Space Nine t-shirt to be ironic. I got it at Goodwill for like, two bucks." Or maybe you'll say, "Look, you can't call me four-eyes! These aren't even prescription lenses!"

These days, there is another label that is thrown around in a derogatory way, and it's one that I have applied to myself my entire life: Christian. It seems like that word has become a slur in recent years. In our culture, "Christian" is a dirty word in many circles. Now, since the first century, people in the unbelieving world have spoken against Christians. The sad thing is that today, their reasons often aren't because we are so passionate about evangelizing or because we are loving those the world has cast aside. Rather, it's because we do many things that don't look very much like Jesus at all.

A few years ago I read a book by David Kinnaman called unChristian. Kinnaman is the president of the Barna Group, which conducts a lot of surveys about religion and spirituality. In this book, Kinnaman reports on a series of surveys about how American's perceive of Christians, and many of his findings are pretty troubling. What he found is that, instead of being known for their love or good works, Christians are usually thought of as hypocritical, judgmental, and out of touch, among other things. The point of the book is a difficult truth: as far as how we are perceived by the world, Christians often look very unlike Jesus.

I think this has even caused many Christians to be leery of the attaching the word "Christian" to themselves. They don't want to be associated with the negative connotations that go with that term in popular culture. So instead, they talk about being Jesus-followers or God-seekers or something like that. And churches, instead of naming themselves that sounds too "Christian-y," choose more hip names like "Legacy" or "Refuge." (You can see a big list of such church names here. And we get books like Rob Bell's Jesus Wants to Save Christians. I haven't read it, so I can't comment on it too much, but I think the title is telling.

My purpose is not to criticize these sorts of efforts at distancing the church from the Christian label. In fact, I wonder if this might be necessary. If the word "Christian" has become stained with so many associations that are harmful to how we are understood by the world, is it a bad thing to discard it so that the gospel isn't dismissed before we even have a chance to present it?

What do you think? Has the word "Christian" become so damaged in our day and age that we should be cautious of applying it to ourselves--not because of fear or timidity, but because we don't want to turn people away unnecessarily? Or is it a label that should continue to be worn with pride?