When Other Christians Have Been Horrible to You
There is no repellant to the faith greater than the sinful actions of someone who identifies as a Christian, and there are few character flaws humanity, both inside and outside the Church, despises more than hypocrisy. Someone may have a strong and life-defining relationship with God, but if they are bombarded by nastiness from brothers and sisters in Christ–particularly if those brothers and sisters are in a position of authority or leadership–it can cause this individual to rethink everything they believe about Christianity.
When I talk about poor Christian conduct, I am not referring to the occasional moral failure of someone who happens to be a Christian. It is unreasonable to assume such things won’t happen just because one is a follower of Jesus. I am instead referring to a repeated, hurtful, and willful pattern of sin against others. When this happens, it can be devastating especially for those whose faith is relatively young. They will begin to feel associated with or complicit in the injustice that is taking place, and if they witness this horrific behavior over a sustained period of time from multiple professing believers, they may begin to think that this is simply what it is to be a Christian. This corrodes the faith of the young believer like acid applied to copper. They emotionally and spiritually spiral, with questions such as these swirling their mind:
Aren’t we supposed to be born again, new creations in Christ? Why are the spiritual authorities, older adults, and pastors in my life acting like the opposite has happened in their own lives?
Why do these people make me and others feel hopeless and worthless instead of building us up?
Why don’t I feel the love of Christ when talking to them? I feel judgment and anger.
Can Jesus actually change our hearts? It doesn’t seem like it.
Is this all fake? All the Christians seem to be.
I do not say this because I enjoy criticizing the Church–she is one of my deepest loves. I say this because discipleship and spiritual growth as modeled by the ministry of Jesus Christ occur primarily through relationship, so it only makes sense that the opposite is the case as well: the unraveling of Gen Z’s beliefs and their spiritual regression also occur primarily through relationship–through hurtful exchanges and a failure to model Christ-like behavior.
To shed some more light on this issue, I want to talk about the most common ways this can happen. It is only after we fully understand this crisis that we can work towards its solution.
Strict and Misguided Upbringings
There is a certain subset of Gen Z youth who were brought up in an incredibly strict and stifling Christian home. This can take many forms, but generally speaking it meant living in an uber-legalistic household that viewed nearly every pastime outside of going to church and reading the Bible as perverted, a slippery slope into vice, a waste of time, or of the devil in some manner.
In practice, this meant enjoying the world of art and human creativity was out of the question. In an understandable attempt to prevent their children from becoming corrupted by the softcore pornography of Hollywood or graphic content in literature, parents barred their children from experiencing anything in the secular world. If it wasn’t sold by a Christian bookseller, they weren’t going to read it. If the film didn’t star Jim Caviezal in a Christ costume or talking vegetables who acted out famous Bible stories, you can bet nobody in the house was going to watch it (this would make for a very interesting viewing experience–after the traumatizing experience of watching Jim Caviezal get absolutely brutalized by the Romans, you could cleanse your palette by watching a bunch of peas escape from abject Egyptian slavery).
Making “secular” friends was out of the question. If they weren’t Christian, then they were not to be associated with under any circumstances. They could be a bad influence and infect good Christian kids with their warped morality. The only acceptable pool of people from which to draw one’s friend group was the church or perhaps the Christian homeschool co-op (which was probably also at the church). This sent the message that those outside the faith were untouchables. They were somehow less-than. Maybe the children growing up in these houses absorbed this from the judgmental or dismissive way their parents talked about unbelievers–words of condemnation and shame and holier-than-thou self-righteousness.
Backwards values on dating and sex were instilled within these Gen Zers in their parents’ attempt to, ironically, ensure that they didn’t hold to any backwards values on dating and sex. In an effort to keep their kids from embracing promiscuity, unfaithfulness, and casual sexual intercourse, they pivoted hard in the opposite direction, unintentionally making sex out to be this evil bogeyman instead of, when enjoyed under the correct circumstances, a beautiful and pleasurable gift from God. Dating became something dangerous, and teens would dread telling their parents they had found a prospective partner. With sex becoming such a dirty word, parents instilled within their teens a resentment and fear directed towards their own natural sexual desire.
The parents of these households had a paralyzing fear of becoming like the rest of the world, so they shut their children out of the world completely. This had unforeseen consequences. Perhaps for a while, the Gen Zers in these homes harbored an intense distrust of the outside world and the many evils that transpired in the land beyond their doorstep, but sooner or later, they matured to an age where they inevitably had to experience it for themselves.
And guess what? The world wasn’t the wasteland of constant agony and misery they had been told it was. In fact, some parts of it were quite good. The non-believers in their workplace were enjoyable to be around, and funny, and caring. Going out to the bar for drinks after work did not have to result in mindless hedonism and instead offered a time of bonding and friendship. Contemporary art–the films, shows, and literature of the modern day–had their lecherous aspects to watch out for, of course, but much of it was enriching to the mind and inspired their own creativity, inspired their own drive to be more courageous and to identify with the broad experiences of the human condition on a deeper level.
These Gen Zers discovered there was a beauty to the outside world about which they had never been taught. It had so much, well, life to offer: there was the vast array of friendships waiting to be shared. The butterflies-in-your-stomach giddiness and punch-in-the-gut heartbreak of romantic relationships unburdened by parental scorn. The unfettered ability to pursue a hobby or creative endeavor without immediately being asked if there were better, more eternally consequential things to do with their time. The nights out on the town laughing and dancing and singing with new friends. They felt…alive.
As they became integrated into this newer, more joyful life, the children of these strict Christian homes began to alter the direction of their resentment. Instead of positioning it toward themselves, it was now pointed straight at their Christian parents, whose scorn and derision for the rest of the world had robbed these Gen Zers of an abundance they hadn’t even known existed. It was also pointed at Christianity itself–that was, after all, the guiding philosophy that had led their parents to rob them of so much joy, was it not? How could a faith that claimed to value virtue and the highest good be so thoroughly contemptuous towards a world that offered so many wonderful experiences? There was a good to the world, an inherent value that had never been revealed to them in their childhood. And to be perfectly frank, their upbringing as children began to seem like a disgusting mix of paranoia, delusion, judgment, self-righteousness, and hatred for others who did not share the same values.
This parental misstep that affected so many members of my generation reminds me of a heresy with which the early Church had to wrestle nearly two thousand years ago. It was called docetism, and it taught that Jesus Christ was fully divine, but it only seemed like He was human while in actuality He was not–in fact, some docetists maintained that He had no physical body at whatsoever, and instead suggested He was a ghost-like apparition or illusion of some sort.
This heresy was rooted in two flawed misconceptions. The first was that God was too transcendent in nature and too holy to ever stoop to our level and take on the physical form of flesh; such an act, in the mind of the docetist, would have been abominable to Him. The second misconception is closely linked to the first: the physical world, to put it bluntly, was basically garbage when compared to the spiritual realm. Material reality–what we could see, touch, taste, hear, and experience for ourselves–was inherently less valuable than spiritual reality, and therefore God could never be a part of it.
This mirrors the strict Christian upbringing of some Gen Zers in that they both discount the goodness of the material world because of a fixation on the spiritual. Because the material world is ravaged by sin, it was deemed worthless. This is a grave error. When God created the world, He called it good. It in some way reflects His beauty, although that reflection is made a bit more blurry by sin. The New Heaven and New Earth will be physical. We will dwell there in new and glorious bodies, enjoying relationship with others, performing fulfilling work, eating meals, discovering new hobbies, and partaking in most of the same activities in which we partake here.
To forget this and teach something different is to teach something other than biblical Christianity, which will never satisfy and never provide an incentive to continue following Jesus, once the individual who grows up under such instruction has the autonomy to decide for themselves what to do. This version of Christianity is creatively stifling, joyless, and dehumanizing, and the world will always have something better to offer than this soulless husk of what is supposed to be a vibrant, joyful, and fulfilling faith.
Hurt from Other Christians
The terminally deconstructed Gen Zers in this category left the faith on the basis of betrayal. A fellow Christian, often an authority figure or spiritual leader of some sort, continually hurt them without repentance or perhaps even without the acknowledgment they had done something wrong. So profound is this betrayal because it comes from someone who was supposed to be entrusted with their spiritual development and wellbeing–these Christians were supposed to gently lead them into greater intimacy with God, helping them pursue the calling of servanthood God placed on their lives.
But that’s not what these Gen Zers received from the believers in their life. They received the exact antithesis of that, the poison that chokes any hope of that meaningful living out. I would wager that having a brother or sister in Christ wound them in this way felt as intimate a betrayal as a stab in the back by an actual blood-related sibling.
It is hard to state how devastating to one’s faith this can be, and it comes in numerous forms. It happened to the Gen Z child who discovered, upon his parents’ divorce, the Church was treating his family differently. Every corner he turned, he would be greeted by knowing glances and hushed whispers–he watched as his family received coldness and scorn from others, and it dawned on him that they were being socially ostracized by the community they had loved and served with for as long as he could remember.
It happened to the Gen Z teen who joined her local church’s Sunday morning worship team as she developed a bright, budding new relationship with Jesus. When she began to experience confusing feelings regarding her sexuality, she confided with her worship leader for support and advice. The only thing she received in her moment of vulnerability, however, was expulsion from the worship team and an invitation to an intrusive sit-down talk with the Senior Pastor–someone who was not supposed to know the confidential information she had shared in the first place.
It happened to the Gen Z adult whose only memory of going to church as a young boy consists of elderly, snappy adults yelling at him for being too loud, or asking too many questions, or looking down on him because he was young and therefore foolish. As he grew older, he listened as the adults spent their time complaining about how bad the world was getting–and it was all the younger generation’s fault, too! He heard them call his generation “idiot liberals” and “blind-as-a-bat morons” because they didn’t see the world the same way or adhere to the same political philosophy (keep in mind I am writing this as a staunch conservative with few sympathies towards contemporary liberalism). And this was coming from the spiritual giants of the church! The older people who were supposed to be solid in their faith, who everyone looked up to as an example. After years of internalizing all this contempt for his own generation, he finally decided to recant his faith in Jesus. Why would he fellowship with people who so clearly hated him?
When the Church treats her own so poorly on a consistent basis, it sends a message to Gen Z: her members do not care what Jesus Christ taught about love and humility and have not been transformed by His grace, despite their claims to the contrary. They do not love anyone outside of themselves except those who think and act exactly as they do, and they do not tolerate any brokenness, dysfunction or moral weakness from anyone. In so doing, large swaths of the Church have opened the exit-door to the faith and efficiently ushered Gen Z through.
Blatant Hypocrisy
Many Gen Zers grew up in churches that were absolutely enamored with their self-perceived piety. These churches rightly valued holy living, but much like the Pharisees during Jesus’ time, they set impossible standards and were hyper-critical of anyone who did not meet them. Furthermore, and this was the worst part: the members of these churches did not meet these standards of righteousness themselves, and yet they still expected perfection from others, actively looking down upon any who failed to do so.
For a while, this self-righteous church-culture could be explained away as a necessary stand to take–in a world full of sin, God’s people could tolerate no moral compromise from their own. However, after a while, it soon became clear that the very same churchgoers who claimed to be so upright and virtuous were engaged in sinful struggles of their own, just like everyone else. This made them the worst kind of hypocrite, as they condemned without a second thought anyone else who made the same errors.
Maybe this hypocrisy took the form of the pious church elder who, ignoring his own fiery comments about others who ended their marriage, quietly divorced his wife, and, in a remarkable turnaround rate, was now dating someone new and quite a bit younger. Or, perhaps it was the youth leader who heaped condemnation on the Gen Zer for their own sexual struggles but later had to step down after the exposure of his own addiction to pornography. It could have been the middle-aged mother in the congregation who preached endlessly on the importance of showing love and grace to others, but in the same breath unleashed a tirade on “the homosexuals and the liberals.”
These acts of hypocrisy are not a small matter. For the Gen Zer who is growing into adulthood and working on the development of a personal faith independent from that of their parents,’ they cannot be ignored. Not only are these instances morally ugly and infuriating to behold–they also appear to undermine one of Christianity’s most fundamental messages which states that Jesus Christ will bring the believer new life, radically transforming them from their old lifestyle. Christian hypocrites, to someone whose faith is in a delicate place, appear to be proof that this does not actually happen. And if it doesn’t actually happen, then who is to say any of Christianity’s claims are true? Why is following Jesus even worth it?
What Do We Do About All of This?
If a terminally deconstructed Gen Zer cited to me these hurts and betrayals as their reason for leaving the faith, I would have to put a lot of thought into my response. When someone confides a wound running as deep as this, I make certain to be as precise as possible in my words so as not to, by accident of careless diction, convey to them that what they went through does not matter or that their feelings are not valid.
I think I would tell them about one of the worst examples of Christian hypocrisy and church-betrayal I have ever heard. I was exposed to this story as a young teen, listening to the preaching of a minister who once served my church. Usually, when the pastor approached the pulpit to deliver his sermon, that was my cue to being daydreaming about what video game I wanted to play next or what story I wanted to write, but for whatever reason this pastor’s retelling of a formative life event has always stuck with me.
He attended a small Bible church as a young man. It was traditional to the bone–very old-timey. I imagine the men wore their Sunday best, with their shoes shined to the max, and the women wore flowing, ornate floral dresses and wide-brim sun-hats with bows tied around them. The sanctuary probably had wooden pews, an organ for worship service, and a song catalog that did not extend beyond the classic hymns. In my mind’s eye, I can picture a sweaty, mildly overweight minister in a black suit (this physical description is entirely hypothetical and no such details were provided by the pastor telling the story) ascending the steps to the pulpit after a worship set on any given Sunday morning. And then he would preach.
Oh, how the man would preach! His genre of sermon-delivery was of the “fire and brimstone” variety, meaning he would get up on that stage each Sunday and, for the next hour-and-fifteen or so, hammer into the heads of his congregation the severity of mankind’s sin, and how all who do not have the blood of Jesus covering them are on the fast-track to the sulfuric hellfire of eternal damnation–that is why they had to repent, repent, repent! Repent and believe the Gospel, and then share it with as many as will listen so the masses’ wickedness does not subject them to the Second Death. The sermons were all about Jesus’ holiness and our wickedness and our need for His holiness and how we ought to live holy lives modeled after His holiness.
It is easy to picture this fire and brimstone teacher, who regularly espoused a call to a higher standard of living, either consciously or unconsciously becoming the gold-standard for what a righteous, well-lived life was supposed to look like in the minds of his congregants. He was a man of principle and action who rejected the ever-increasing debauchery of the pagan world, set his sights on Jesus, and challenged those under his care to do the same.
Imagine everyone’s surprise when the misdeeds of his scandalous personal life could no longer be kept secret. One day, they were hit with the terrible news that their pastor was leaving his wife for the secretary with whom he was having an affair–not only that, but he was abandoning his pastorate and running off to start a new life with her. Basically, their former pastor had picked up a bag of construction bricks and slugged them with it as hard as he could. This was the kind of news that had the potential to shatter the entire congregation, potentially even damaging people’s faith.
Right then, my former pastor had a choice. He and his faith could enter a free-fall downward spiral because a prominent Christian leader in his life–one he looked to as a source of spiritual instruction, encouragement, and direction–had failed to live up to his own teaching and hurt others. Or, he could remain on the path and keep following Jesus.
He chose to remain on the path. The reason? The sin of man does not negate the truth of the Gospel message. The underhandedness of corrupt church leaders, the hypocrisy of pew-sitters, the hatred of self-righteous pharisees…these human atrocities do not undo what Jesus did on the cross. It does not take away the reality of the resurrection or the existence of a loving God.
In fact, in their own broken way, these painful betrayals demonstrate humanity’s utterly fallen nature and our desperate need for a savior–for someone to come and save us from our own filth. The people–the believers–who have hurt us most in life represent this; they are the language in which this broken world is speaking, telling us to turn our eyes upon He Who Restores. They are symbols, pointing us to the fundamental Truth of reality, which also happens to be the Creator and Sustainer of reality: Jesus Christ–God in the flesh Who offers the wretched sinner redemption through His loving sacrifice.
Now, in telling this to the struggling Gen Zer whose wounds are still relatively fresh, tact is needed. I am in no way trying to tell someone who has experienced church-hurt, religiously fueled bigotry, ostracization, or anything else in this category that what they went through is a small matter, and they just need to get over it already. I understand the hurt that comes with those things. I am instead respectfully pleading with them not to conflate Jesus Christ with sinful, fallible human beings. The validity of the Christian faith does not hinge upon the conduct of its self-proclaimed adherents.
This is why, if there is an individual who has begun to follow Jesus, and slowly but surely the Truth of Christ and the joys of Christian living are being revealed to them, they ought not let the actions of any man keep them from glorifying and enjoying their Creator. Do not let an evil, self-righteous, impossible-to-please hypocrite rob you of your purpose. Characters such as this will come and go throughout the story of our lives (and perhaps, in our fallen state, we will even play this miserable part in someone else’s life), but the loving kindness of Jesus remains. This is not to say that anyone should put up with spiritual abuse or leave themselves open to be hurt again by untrustworthy people. By all means, leave that church, or put up the necessary boundary.
I am only suggesting that human dysfunction, even that which is found within the Church, is not a deterrent from following Jesus. It is a giant sign with a great big arrow and neon letters spelling out this message: “All have sinned and all are sinners. All have fallen short of God’s glory. Our only hope is Jesus Christ. Follow Him. Serve Him. Live for Him. Place your trust in Him, and Him alone!”
Place your trust in Him, and Him alone. Placing it in anyone else, even the most respectable of spiritual leaders, will reliably leave you empty, spiteful, and miserable.
