Lutheran Church Missouri Synod

Scary Christians

By Dr. Richard P. Bucher

"If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation" (John 11:48). So said the Sanhedrin about Jesus shortly after he had raised Lazarus from the dead. These words show that chief among the emotions animating them, chief among the complex of passions which drove them to put Jesus to death was FEAR. The chief priests and Pharisees were scared to death of Jesus. Why? Jesus threatened their way of life. After many conflicts over many years, the Sanhedrin had managed to maintain a delicate balance with the Romans. The Romans just barely allowed the Jews to worship according to their tradition. But it wouldn't take much, the Sanhedrin reasoned, to upset that balance. They were deathly afraid that the Romans would see a mass Jesus movement as a threat to Caesar and in response would destroy the Jewish way of life.

To this day Christians are quite scary to many people. Unfortunately Christians often underestimate how terribly frightening they are to nonChristians. But even when they take stock of it and admit it, Christians find this fear puzzling and almost amusing. "How can anyone be afraid of people dedicated to loving all people as themselves, even their enemies?" they wonder.

We need to open our eyes and see ourselves as we are seen. What makes Christians scary is not their love. Two things in tandem make them frightening, the same two things that made Jesus frightening. The first thing is that Christians hold to absolute truth. They confess and believe that Jesus Christ is the only Savior, that theirs is the only true God, and that Christianity is the only true religion (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; Romans 10:9-10). They confess and believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth, absolute right and wrong, and that Christianity perfectly reveals these values. The second thing is that they believe that everyone is obligated to hold to these absolutes. In other words Christians are not content with keeping their absolute beliefs private. They are committed to bringing these absolutes into the public sphere.

It is especially this second point that makes Christians scary. To the many people out there today who have been influenced by postmodernism and therefore no longer believe in absolutes, the fact that Christians still hold to absolutes is mildly frightening, but mostly amusing. What is terrifying to these people is the fact that Christians bring their absolutes into the public sphere and try to convince others that these absolutes should be followed by all. This scares some people to death because it threatens their way of life. Like the Sanhedrin before them, they are afraid that Christianity will somehow destroy freedom as they have known it. It is this fear, more than anything else that motivates them in opposing all that is Christian. We dare not underestimate this fear. And we truly need to take stock of it as we are trying to win them for Christ. But most of all, we should rejoice that we who are feared are also those who are so divinely favored and forgiven through Jesus Christ.

February 1999