wrighters.net

Pretending to be a Christian

I saw several links to this story on the New York Times Freakonomics blog this past week about a family in Texas that pretends to be Christians so that their children can socialize with other members of the community.

We are agnostics living deep in the heart of Texas and our family fakes Christianity for social reasons. It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended.

This type of behavior coming from people claiming to be followers of Jesus is just so contrary to how he lived his own life. Reading comments on various blogs seems to show that this is probably more common than most Christians would like to think. People are pressured into ‘acting religious’ in order to fit into their community or families or to keep a job or other position where someone in power is forcing religion on them. What is so sad about this is that the people who are pressuring this family to behave this way are missing out on some great conversations and friendships.

If we really cared about them and wanted them to see true Christianity in action, then we’d seek them out for play dates and social interactions before those who were regular church attenders. Compare the behavior this family encountered with the way Jesus interacted with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, or his interaction with Zacchaeus, an outcast of Jewish society in Luke 19:1-10.