November 4, 2021
Christians love their lingo. They affectionately call it “Christianese.”
But often under these cute and charming quirks of Christianity there lurks a more troubling implication. I’ve previously discussed this idea here.
Today, I’ll explore three more popular “Christianese” words and phrases and analyze why they’re troubling.
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“Fellowship”
Fellowship is when a group of Christians hang out, but there’s some kind of intention involved. The event, although casual and fun, should at some point include edifying content that reinforces the belief of the group.
That description is overly complicated, but essentially it means that Christians often don’t allow themselves to just shoot the shit.
When I still believed, I had a Christian friend who went through a strong “fellowship” phase (a “season” if you will). In his mind, as long as a group of believers was gathered—even if it was just to watch football or have dinner—there should be some sort of “teaching moment” or Christian content injected into the situation. Otherwise it was a “wasted opportunity.”
Even when I was a believer, this irritated me. Sometimes I just wanted to hang out with my friends. We’d be laughing, joking around, and having a great time with high energy, then someone jarringly shoehorns religious conversation into the mix. When this happens—even if it’s a positive message—it always brings a solemn and serious attitude. The fun vibe is totally killed.
Of course, I always felt guilty about feeling this way. I figured it was selfish to just want to hang out with my friends and that trying to put up a wall to block out the overly serious Christian conversation was me missing an opportunity to “hear a word from God” or something like that.
Years later, I now realize I was right. “Fellowship” sucked because sometimes it’s okay to hang out with your friends without an agenda.
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“Have a heart”
I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard someone in my old church tell me they “had a heart” for some group of people or some seemingly random country picked on a map.
At my old church, there was a high school girl in the youth group who decided she “had a heart” for orphans in an Eastern European country. She declared this to everyone and said she was going to “fix the situation” because God told her to.
Naturally, everyone was very supportive. Of course I was the lone shithead to have doubts. I couldn’t help but think: “this girl’s never been to that country, doesn’t have her own money, and doesn’t even have a drivers permit. How the hell is she going to fix the orphan situation halfway across the world?”
Christians say “have a heart” to communicate that they care about some group or place, but “having a heart” is elevated to a lot more than mere caring. It means they intend to “do something” to bring some kind of benefit or change to that group or location (whether or not those people even asked for their help to begin with). Usually this comes in the form in ill-conceived mission trips.
What frustrates me most about Christians who say they “have a heart” for a group or place is that it often seems to come out of left field. There’s no prior sensible connection between them and this object of their heart. Their family or ancestors are not from there. They do not speak the local language. Many times, they haven’t even friggin’ visited.
Usually, Christians start “having a heart” for a group or a place when they see a sad video or a visiting missionary shows up one Sunday to bring news about how some place where he’s done mission work isn’t exactly like a western country and that upsets him.
It’s totally cool when people start caring about something besides themselves—a location, a people group, etc.—but that caring always seems to be more effective and meaningful when it comes from somewhere that’s genuine and authentic. Usually that means a person had a profound, prolonged, in-person experience with the said location or people group that changed their perspective. This is the opposite of when Christians suddenly “have a heart” for somewhere and it honestly feels like they spun a globe and mashed their finger down randomly.
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“In the world, not of it.”
Oh god. This one makes me want to vomit.
I’ve written before how many fundamentalist Christians often avoid personal responsibility. They do this because they have a magical sky daddy who’s got their backs in all things. He’s planned everything already, will handle everything in “his timing” and everything’s all good all the time because God’s got it covered.
When Christians say they’re “in the world, not of it” this is an extension of that avoidance of personal responsibility. They need a way to claim that while they exist in this world, they actually aren’t involved in the very reality that surrounds their day-to-day lives. Saying this gives them an excuse to “check out” and pretend they are different.
This goes further than choosing to abstain from certain things that Christians believe to be “of the world” such as drugs and premarital sex. The ridiculousness of this statement is even clearer today when it’s becoming increasingly apparent that inaction is actually its own action. Pretending to not be “of the world” isn’t the get-out-of-jail-free card they think it is.
Anything I missed? Let me know in the comments!
I love your reading of “In the world, but not of it” as a way to avoid personal responsibility. I remember feeling like that phrase was a threat that I had better not sin, even though it will be very hard because the entire secular world is literally just a giant sin-fest. Christians always positioned the secular world as always sinful and bad, and so I would look at things that (in my eyes) SEEMED good (non-religious drives to end world hunger, non-Christian people being kind) but I immediately discounted any “good” because I figured anything “of the world” was sinful. Anything that seemed beneficial done by worldly people must have had an ulterior motive. Now I know it was the exact opposite- it is Christians who do “good things” for the motive of heaven, etc.
Thanks for this blog! I’m excited to dive in.
I had many of the same feelings as you about “in the world, but not of it” when I was a believer. Even if something seemed “good” I needed that injection of God into the mix to somehow make it “valid.”
You’re welcome, and I’m glad you’re here!