Here's an anecdote I once read from the daily Christian devotional Our Daily Bread: There was once a new convert to Christianity who had just finished reading the entire Bible. She went up to her friend who had led her into the new faith and asked her a book on the history of Christianity.
"Why?" the startled friend asked.
The new convert replied,
"I'm curious. I've begun to wonder when did all these so-called 'followers of Christ' acted so un-Christian."
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Christianity, it has been said, is in a deep crisis in recent decades due to an increasing sense of "loss of faith" among its believers.
Conservative elements have tended to put the blame on the elements of “worldliness” and evil: liberalism, secularism, Communism, and all the other “-isms” that many hardline Christians have lumped into the single term, Anti-Christ.
But I beg to differ. As Jesus Christ has relentlessly exposed in his ministry, the root cause of all this “loss of faith” may be in the modern-day “Pharisees” who have failed to walk the talk.
We’ve seen it all: priests and pastors engaged in sexual abuse of minors, church leaders living an unashamedly privileged lifestyle — mansions, yachts, private planes, and all the pleasures of life that come tax-free — while their followers who are deep in debt and had to work two, even three jobs, just to survive must give a tenth of their earnings to church.
In fact, in the United States, this widespread exploitation of religion for gain has gotten even the more blatant with the rise of the “Prosperity Gospel” (a misnomer, as Saint Paul himself emphasized to the Galatians), a notion that wealth is a sign of God’s favor and that the more money the faithful gives to religious leaders, the more favor and blessings will come their way.
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That the so-called “Evangelical Christianity” had fallen deep into hypocrisy and blindness is best seen by the fact that many "Christian leaders" in the United States endorsed the presidency of Donald Trump in the 2016 elections.
Trump, who pledged on “making America great again,
”instead left the United States a pariah among many of its former allies as he wrecked friendships, made alliances with those with the worst interests of America at heart, bumbled his way from crisis and crisis that culminated in the anti-science reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic that ultimately resulted in the “preventable” deaths of millions of Americans.
And yet many "Christians" — who Jesus Christ gave the order to sow justice, fairness and charity towards all (repeat, towards ALL people, regardless of their faith or race or gender), continue to see Trump as the “Messiah” who will save America from the evils of modern society.
We’re seeing the same phenomenon here in the Philippines — these "Christians" who support convicted plunderers, murderers and men of questionable background during elections, all because they fear of a resurgence of Communism of the “yellow forces” (to tell you the truth, that “dilawan” argument is so cliché that it should be killed once and for all).
This week, let’s all reflect on the choice that we will make on May 9. Are our voting preferences borne out of selfish predilections or a God-driven purpose to heal our land from all of its societal ills?