Ashamed of the Gospel: A Confession

             I recently found out one of my coworkers was a Christian. Its not a very big deal really except that she seemed to be fairly surprised that I was. I started noticing little things afterwards such as the Wednesday night group she had was now the Wednesday night bible study. And this made me wonder whether I act in such a way that suggests I am not a Christian. What I think it is more is that Christians in general have a habit of assuming everyone around them is not a Christian. But we do not react by trying to talk to these people, learn their beliefs, and explain our own. Instead we just don’t mention it and try to avoid it. We act as though Christians are still fed to lions. The question is what makes us so afraid of admitting our faith? For me I think it is embarrassment or even shame.
           
             If its shame than what is it shame of? It is not shame of Christianity itself, at least not directly. But I’m not convinced that matters. No matter how innocent and just one’s reasons are for not sharing the gospel and declaring their beliefs are, they are still not allowing others to know what they believe. Jesus was pretty clear about what he thought of people who were ashamed of him. In Mark 8:9 Jesus said, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." And Paul said in Romans 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” But if I will not mention in public that I believe in the Gospel, than I am effectively acting ashamed of the Gospel.
           

So what are the reasons that I will not tell others of my beliefs? I think it boils down to two things for me. These two things may also be effectively the same thing but they are different enough for me to babble about both of them separately. 

The first reason is that I don’t want people to think I’m stupid. I believe Christianity is a very rational and intellectual religion with an incredibly impressive history of intellectualism. But I’m not really going to get into that here since it’s not really the point. The point is that there are very vocal people who think it is stupid to believe in God (Christian or otherwise) and others who just think believing in a specific religion is stupid. Still there is a whole host of Christians who have made Christianity look stupid. As a result I sometimes fear that people will think I am stupid if I tell them I am a Christian.  Now why do I actually care what they think of me? And why does looking smart matter to me so much? I don’t know. I tell myself its Christianity I don’t want people to misunderstand and think stupid. But I’m not correcting peoples’ misconceptions, which means that it’s me that I’m worried about people judging. This is something I often struggle with though and it basically boils down to arrogance. For those keeping score this is now to sins; shame of the Gospel, and arrogance. 

             The second reason is that I don’t want people to think I’m mean. Christians seem to have this reputation these days of people judgmental, hypocritical, psychotic hillbillies. That may be a slight exaggeration but not by a lot. People think that Christians are mean people who are always telling them what’s wrong with them. And the problem is that there are Christians who then further this reputation by publicly acting like jerks. The kneejerk reaction of many Christians to this is to deny those who they think are mean. Some rename the religion; “I’m a Christian Spiritualist” or “I’m a Christ Follower”. And others just state that those Christians they don’t like are not Christians. This is not based off of whether they have faith in Jesus Christ but rather how good of a person they seem to be. This is bad. First of all we all fail at being Christians. We are incapable of being good on our own and only through Christ can we do good. We all have sinned and all fallen short of the glory of God.  But for some reason we think its okay to judge and dislike those who we deem judgmental. Now, it is good to correct our fellow Christians when they accredit to Christ philosophies and views that are not Christians. But it is not good to hate them or be ashamed of them for they are also children of God. And I can only correct peoples’ misconceptions of Christianity if they know I am a Christian.

             I am sure that there are many other reasons people feel nervous to tell people they are Christians but I can’t think of any that are good. We are not called to hide who we are, and are in fact told not to. I have felt ashamed of my Christian brothers and sisters and have thought myself better than them and for this I repent and ask that Christ would help me to stop judging my fellow Christians, and would give me the strength to not hide my beliefs, but rather to proudly tell them to others.