Some of my greatest pet peeves of all time come from hanging around the proverbial Christian bubble. I broke the bubble a long time ago and don't hang around Christians exclusively, so thankfully I don’t hear this stuff very often. But when I do, man it irks my nerves and then some. Here are five stupid things Christians need to stop saying, like right now. Or yesterday. That works too…
1. “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.”
Cue the video with a millennial talking, standing outside with a historic church building in the background. This one drives me crazy. It’s not me, it’s you (meaning, this statement). This one has to go. Christianity is not a private faith, it’s a public faith. When Jesus died on the cross, was he crucified in solitary confinement? No. He died in a public space, where people on a public road passed by to witness his death. This makes being a Christian not only a personal act or decision but a very public one. (Remember when Jesus said something along the lines of, “If anyone denies me in front of others I’ll deny him before the Father?”)
If it’s public, then it’s a public religion that you are either part of or you’re not. If you’re in a relationship with Jesus, then you also belong to his church (the body of Christ, to which Jesus is the head). Entering into a relationship with Jesus begins with baptism, which is a religious thing to do. It’s a religious rite, called a “sacrament” that ushers us into the family of God—marking us out from the world and saying before the world, “This one belongs to the Triune God.” You can’t get more religious than that.
When we say “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship,” it's misleading and makes it sound like it's just me and Jesus inside of my wee little heart. But that's not the Christian faith. Sure, each Christian has a relationship with God in Christ—I get that, but Christianity is still a religion and carries with it doctrines (teachings) that we must believe if we are following Jesus. God is triune, Jesus was truly God and man, etc.
2. “Hate the sin, love the sinner.”
It’s time to let this one go. Evangelical Christians can probably recite this one with more certainty than John 3:16, but it’s a phrase found nowhere in the Holy Bible. It never made it in David’s Psalms. It didn’t make the 10 commandment list. And it was never penned by Saint Paul.
So where then does it come from? Some people cite Saint Augustine of Hippo (circa 424 AD) for this saying, but in his 211 Letter he actually just said, “With love for mankind and hatred of sins.” (Not really translating to this popular phrase, at all.)
It was hundreds of years later in 1929 when Mohandas Gandhi said it in his autobiography. “Hate the sin and not the sinner.” It sounds like a nice proverb, but it isn’t Christian. So let’s stop saying it. Because when we say it and try to implement it, our hatred of the sin always gets in the way of coming close to loving the sinner.
As we “hate the sin,” we just stiff-arm the person we claim to love. Now when we see that person, all we look at and tend to focus on is the sin that it is we see them committing that makes them less obedient to God than us. (Another problem with this right off the bat, is that Jesus warned us about pulling the plank out of our own eye first before judging the spec in our brother’s eye…oh well. That’s biblical.)
It’s as if we are saying with our actions, “I love you, but only to a point. I love you as long as there is nothing that I don't like about you. But if I find something, well, then my love for you stops.” The problem with this is, aside from failing to view each person as being made in the image of God, we also fail to seek to love them as God has loved us. And it makes us crusty and bitter and judgy. Who wants to be around that?
It’s better for Christians to lead with the gospel and with the image of God than with ethics. Ethics come, but they come as we grow up into the perfect icon of God (Colossians 1), Jesus Christ himself. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, and it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance (not his stiff upper lip). So let’s stop saying this one, yeah?
3. “When God closes the door, he opens a window!”
This one is pure optimism. That is all.
But what happens when God closes the door and boards up the windows too in someone’s life? Then what? This is a dumb statement.
It’s dumb because we don’t know what’s next. We can hope that when a person faces job loss, or sudden unexpected death of a loved one, or an unwanted diagnosis, that there will be better days this side of heaven. But we don’t know that for sure. Brighter days may only come in glory. We might be suffering for a long time before that though. That's what happened to various Christians throughout church history, why couldn’t it also be our destiny? Jesus suffered a buttload, why do we think somehow we are going to escape it?
Sometimes the door is shut, the windows are boarded up, and the house even burns down. That’s okay, because no matter what happens, “I am not my own, but belong in body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ” (Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 1).
Like most of these pithy statements, they are last-gasp attempts to comfort someone when we don’t know what else to say. So why not say nothing? Just food for thought…
4. “God said it. I believe it. That settles it!”
The problem with this saying is that there are a lot of things that God has said in the Bible, and that means a lot of things inside of the Bible can be used and twisted to suit unintended purposes and have harmful consequences. For example, in the Garden of Eden, the wicked serpent used God's own words and twisted them to convince Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3). “Did God actually say ‘you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” when God actually said, “You may eat of any tree in the garden, except for that one over there.”
People use and abuse Scripture to suit their own ends all the time. But there are steps to understanding what the Bible says and does not say. The words in the Bible must be interpreted through prayerful rigorous study that uses literary context, semantics and syntax, and historical understanding, all weighed against the history of interpretation in order to arrive at a trustworthy understanding of what is being said. This process goes well beyond just reading a verse, closing the good book, and saying “Ah ha! Got you!” to our “enemies.” That's just dumb.
Additionally, appealing to the Bible on its own in an age of skepticism doesn’t do anything to help a conversation move forward. Ultimately, yes, a Christian believes the Bible because God authored and authorized it and we trust him, but that doesn’t mean we believe the Bible is authoritative without reason. There are credible, reliable reasons to believe that the Bible is the Word of God and carries with it an authority we shouldn't try to overrule with our subjective opinions. But when we say stuff like, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it!” well, this just shuts any and all conversation down. It’s arrogant and boastful (which are two things that God has said in the Bible shouldn’t mark his followers—oh well.)
5. “God won’t ever give you more than you can handle.”
Um, actually he will and he often does. He gave Jesus and the apostles so much for them to handle that most of them died. One of them (John) was sentenced to exile.
I’m pretty sure God can and does give us way more than we can handle.
But that doesn’t mean that well-meaning Christians won’t say this one during a moment of deep pain or crisis. It’s like saying “Everything happens for a reason,” when you don’t know what to say to someone. Well, how about we just don’t say anything at all? Or how about we use our brains a little and say real words of comfort to someone who is utterly broken and cast down in spirit due to bad circumstances?
As an alternative, maybe say, “Wow, you're going through so much right now. I can’t imagine what it’s like, but I’m here with you in your pain. Can I pray with you?”