Misrepresented: Christianity in the Limelight

Being a Christian should make you a light of love, not a portrait of bigotry

I have recently been thinking about my walk with God and I was thinking about how it can be really difficult sometimes being a Christian in a secular world. It's hard to talk about your faith without someone accusing you of jamming it down their throat. Of course, you want everyone to know about God's love, but, even if the whole world was Christian, there would be some lady going, "Did you see how short her dress was? Did you see that she was listening to Taylor Swift? That's not very Christian of her". And that's exactly what brings me to my point, I want to talk about why Christianity is being left and why people are turning away from the church.

So, welcome to our first series on this blog: Misrepresented. People are turning away from the church talking about church hurt and trauma, this should not be the way people feel about God. This world is fallen, church is not perfect. However, some of these issues are just the enemy trying to turn us away from each other. We need to be a strong body of Christ. I have too many opinions on this, so I'm breaking it down into smaller bites. Today, we are talking about Christian role models and Christianity in the media.

The first thing I want to say, kind of as a disclaimer, everyone's walk with God is going to look different and people have differing opinions on lots of things so, go forward in this post knowing that Jesus loves you no matter what you choose and I won't judge you if you disagree, these are just some things I have learned and opinions I have formed over time.

A little bit about my testimony is that God saved me during a time where I felt all alone and I was really struggling with my mental health. I was raised Christian but I really started understanding God's love about a year ago. However, I have been learning about God for years, I really started scratching the surface of understanding God's love when I was 18 years old and I was surrounded by people who had a strong relationship with God. I would go to Bible studies, worship nights, young adult church groups, chapel, church, I did it all. I learned how to say more thoughtful and intentional prayers. I said all the right words and did all the right things, but I didn't feel it. Flash forward to a year ago, God saved me.

However, throughout this year, I have struggled more with temptation than ever and I have fallen into sin more than ever. And, that's no surprise, the closer you get to God, the more the enemy tries to get you back. I once heard that if things aren't going well in life, you must be doing something right (idk about that one but whatever). This is the exact reason why bad things happen to good people; war, disease, and pain are not from God, they are from the fallen world and God hates them even more than we do. But a huge tragedy that causes church hurt and causes people to turn away from faith is the lack of open discussion of pain and sin. I have never understood why we refuse to talk about drawbacks and pitfalls. Christians are supposed to be loving and caring and open to listening, but it's truly a vicious cycle of everyone being too prideful to open up and too judgmental to listen. We are fighting against ourselves.

This is why it's so important to be open with fellow Christians. As a Christian, you do not simply go to church, you are a part of the church. Christians are the church, we are the body of Christ and when you get baptized, you become one with Christ. Christ calls us to live in harmony with each other and to walk along side each other. We need to be realistic with one another and genuinely support each other. Most pastors and church leaders will really suggest finding a mentor within the church that is not in your immediate family to give you judgement-free guidance and discipleship.

We need to stop pretending that we live these perfect, amazing lives and start getting real with each other. Let's have the hard conversations. Being too afraid or nervous to have conversations about real life is not love. Refusing to have these conversations in private churches causes a huge issue when Christianity gets portrayed to the public. If we cannot present ourselves in a unified and loving way, spreading the Gospel becomes much more difficult. We cannot present ourselves as a genuine and kind if non Christians keep coming to us with our hypocrisy. Yes, there are anomalies, but we are facing a time of major division on every single topic ever. If Christians do not unify, who will take us seriously?

I'll be the first to say it, I'm a sinner. I make mistakes, I mess up, I fall into sin, and sometimes I don't know how to stop. I do not know what to do when I finally get a grip and break my bad habit other than pray and ask for forgiveness. Even when I know better. In Romans 7, Paul talks about his struggle with sin, "'For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. '"(Romans 7:18). This is quite literally the eternal struggle of the modern Christian. You know better than to sin, you don't want to do it, but here we are, Sunday morning, and we're sitting in the back pew with our guard up so no one knows what we're doing. But do we dare talk about it? Very rarely.

So, problem #1 is a lack of Christian role models that we can relate to.

I think a lot of Christians just feel embarrassed for making mistakes and for sinning when, in reality, humans are sinful in nature. God is not surprised that you messed up, in fact, he knows exactly when and how you're going to do it. God knows your every thought. So, every time you have an unkind or unbiblical thought, you are guilty of sinning. and let me make this point extremely clear: EVERYONE SINS! But when no one wants to talk about it, it's problematic.

Take, for example, cleaning up a mess. If you spill water all over the counter, you can try to wipe it up, but the counter will still be wet for a while. But, if you grab more paper towels and continue to wipe it until it's dry, it will dry much quicker. When we sin (spill water) we can try to clean it ourselves but the sin might keep tempting us. When we tell others about the struggle, we are going to be held accountable for not falling into that sin. The mess will be cleaned quicker.

I had a conversation with a few friends about supporting a friend going through a tough time. We talked about how we may not relate to the situation, but we can relate to the feeling. This is why we need Christian representation. No one likes to feel alone, having a role model who is Christian but is open with their struggles is so helpful. I think some great examples of Christian role models in the media are Chris Renzema (singer) and Liv Pearsall (Tik Tok influencer). Chris opens up in his songs about mental health and struggles in trusting God. This makes his music so popular because Christians feel seen and as though they have an outlet to say "ok I know I can get through this, Chris got through this". Liv makes fun, creative content that is funny without being that regular "Christian comedy" style of funny (you can only make so many jokes about Christian cussing before we all get tired of it). She still has opinions on the Christian things, she still listens to Doja Cat. Her heart belongs to Christ and while she partakes in the things of the secular world, she knows her home is Heaven and I love how firm she is in her faith.

If we are going to call ourselves Christians, let's keep it real. Stop all the, "listening to secular music is a sin" and "wearing a crop top will ruin the Christian image". Let's start talking about the things that really matter. Let's start meeting people where they are and walking with them in their journey to finding Christ.

So, we need more representation in the media to combat us from the current narrative being spread about us. I feel like Christians get a bad wrap. Of course, there are Christians that are judgey and cruel but we all sin, I think all around, Christians and non-Christians alike, we all need to be more open minded. Generalized statements (aka, stereotypes) are dangerous, we have established this. We need to stop judging people by their label and start judging by the content of their character.

We should also stop using Christianity as something to joke around about. It drives me insane when artists compare themselves to Jesus. Let's keep the holy things holy. If a celebrity has to make fun of my religion to make their song or movie a hit, it speaks more on their lack of ability to be unique and creative and their excessive ability to be a bully (my go to statement in life is if someone is going out of their way to make your day worse, what does it say about them? It says they're jealous of your life and things aren't going well for them). I hate the argument of "people can get away with making fun of Christianity but if it were any other religion, there would be a disaster", it's lazy (it's true, but it's lazy)

Christians get painted as hateful, which is simply not true. Christians are called to be a light to the world. We are called to love people, and not judge them. When I say "love", I mean the kind of love that protects others. I love my friend, so I will not let her go out and do drugs and let her ruin her health because of it. My mom loves me, so when I was a kid she didn't let me put my hand on a hot stove because she knew I would get burned. God loves us like a father and the things in the Bible that are sins are not there because God wants us to be sad and bored. He wants us to be happy and have a good time, but in a safe way. Think of the Christian kind of love as a love that a parent has for their child. God knows that sinning will hurt us, He is wise and those laws are in place so that we can set ourselves up for success. As a Christian, I love people, but I will not support their sin. I would hope other Christians would do the same for me. I have all kinds of friends: Christian and non-Christian and I love them with my whole heart. I will not support the life choices that are sinful. I still love them, I still spend time with them, I still listen to their issues even when they are sinning. I will always offer to pray for them and with them, read the Bible with them, support them out of their sin, answer questions about my religion, give them my best advice, etc. I will not support them actively living in sin.

When doing this it can sometimes be difficult to not sound judgmental, but this goes back to understanding the feeling and not the situation. Christians sin too, so we all just need to be better at understanding each other. Be quick to listen and slow to speak. Base your decisions on people's character and not their stereotype.

As always, please let me know your thoughts. If you have anything you want to say or you want me to talk about, please leave a comment! Best wishes my loves,

Livi