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Huge percentages of people,
you know, 91 percent believe that Christians are anti-homosexual,
87 percent believe that we're hypocritical, 84 percent believe
that we're judgmental.
I had never written a book before, and
I wrote this book - it's called "unChristian." It's really, like, a book
about all the negative perceptions that people have about Christians,
and we're trying to help bring some reality,
a dose of reality to the Christian community to try to have this
inside-outside conversation about the fact that the, the population feels this
way about
about Christians and we're known to be hypocrites. I mean, there's so many things
about
Christianity in this country and in
my church and in my life that is not very
likable. It's not, it's not very Christian.
We seem to wrestle with who we are and who we are becoming. We seem to
have some of the, the most profound moments of goodness
and then the most depraved moments of darkness in our lives.
That, that's just true of us.
One of the huge challenges that we have as Christians is that there's
so many of us that, that say we're Christian, and I wonder whether that's
that's really the case. Like, are we just like socially Christian, culturally
Christian,
but no longer really following Jesus? And so I think this idea of
like, everyone likes God and most people like Jesus
and fewer people like the church - is the best way to put it, is that there's this
the least favorable part of religion is organized religion
in our country today. Maybe our whole idea of being a part of church, and being a part
of organized religion is
is off-base - that we've made it, you know, something more like
a gym to be a member of rather than a movement
to be, to be a part of.
I also see times in, in
the things that we work on with faith communities - you see
people bringing some of the best things to their communities.
They're, they're serving the homeless or they're
they're working with at-risk teenagers or they're
they're willing to do and invest in young lives in ways that
are really a personal cost to themselves. And among this group of people called
evangelicals,
even though have a terrible reputation in many ways, they actually give
something like ten times more money
towards charities and towards churches than anyone else
in our culture. They have a lot that they don't do right, but there's some things
that are really
amazing about their lives and the way they give and the way they
care for their communities and the way that they invest in others, and I think
that's an example
of faith really working.