Toxic Christians and Marketing
There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t spend some time trying to clean up the mess left behind by a toxic Christian. This is a difficult topic because it straddles a gap between Christians who are doing a bad job of showing Christ to the world and non-Christians who would use an episode with a toxic Christian as an excuse to avoid doing something that they weren’t going to do anyway.
So….what is a toxic Christian? My definition is: “a Christian who is focused on some aspect of the faith other than loving God and loving his/her neighbor.”
First of all, they are Christians. They are saved. They will be in paradise. They honestly believe that they are doing God’s work. They tend to be legalistic. They focus on one or more of the 600 some odd rules that are scattered through the bible. Invariably, they choose a rule that is being broken by somebody else. This results in a self righteous presentation of our faith. This is often accompanied by an element of anger. This is often seen as hypocritical. The toxic Christian often speaks for the faith by condemning others. The subtext is “I’m better than you.” FWIW they are not better than you. By focusing on the sin of others they manage to push their own sinfulness into the background.
Why are toxic Christians a problem? It’s simple. Our job is to draw others to Christ. We are here to market Christianity to the “unchurched”. A toxic Christian can drive more people away in a day than I can draw back in a year. How many times have you talked to somebody about Christ only to have them reject him outright based on something a toxic Christian did or said to them 20 years ago?
We often see Christianity portrayed in a bad light in the media. We are portrayed as angry, judgemental, and legalistic. This saddens and offends me. There are TV shows that I avoid because of their consistent portrayal of Christians as bad people. But, where does this come from? I believe that these shows are often striking back against toxic Christians. I also believe that these portrayals of toxic Christians do more damage to the faith than the many shows that portray and even glorify the occult.
My son was badly injured in a motorcycle accident. He was paralyzed for a while but was on crutches and was relearning how to walk. A young, devout, but toxic, Christian walked up to him and said, “I can heal you right now!” He said a brief prayer and then said “walk!” Nothing changed. He told my son that the reason that he wasn’t healed was due to my son’s failure of faith. You can argue about the theology involved all day. The point is that the presentation of Christianity by that young man moved my son further away from Christ not closer. Many years later, I still haven’t fully overcome the damage that that kid, and others like him, did in 10 minutes. By the way, my son can now walk!
Toxic Christianity is about bad marketing. It is about a narrow, legalistic focus on secondary rules. It misses the forest of God’s deep abiding love by focusing on a tree that is one of the hundreds of God’s rules. It is driven by something, anything, other than Christ’s love for all of us…..ALL OF US.
So, how do we market Christianity? I can begin with what will not work. You will not draw others to Christ with bulletproof dogma, with miracles, with bible quotations, with the promise of heaven or the threat of hell. You will not lead others to Christ by beating them up over rule #342. You will not save somebody with any message that implies, “If you were as good as me you might get into heaven.”
Others will come to Christ when they see what you do….how you live….when they feel the joy and love that radiates out from you. They will see the evidence of the great treasure that you have found. They will say to themselves. “I don’t know what he has……but I want some of it.”
I have heard it said that joy is the surest sign of the presence of God.
If you think that you might be toxic when interacting with somebody, ask yourself these questions. “Is what I am doing right now motivated by love for God and love for this person?” and ”Will what I am doing right now draw this person to Christ?” If you are not absolutely sure that the answer to these critical questions is yes, then just stop. By not driving them away you may give somebody else a chance to draw them to Christ somewhere down the road.
Let me be more blunt. If you are a toxic Christian, the most productive ministry that you can undertake may be to sit down, shut up, and let somebody who is focused on God’s love and love for their fellow man do the heavy lifting.
I am convinced that there are many people who will die unsaved because of an encounter with a well intentioned but toxic Christian decades ago.
If you are the victim of an encounter with a toxic Christian somewhere in the past, I am truly sorry. Whatever he or she said or did…..it did not come from God but from a fallible human being…..just like me. Don’t let his or her bad job of marketing keep you from the love and joy that you are meant for.