We're all familiar with hard-boiled Christian clergy who rail against the sins of other people and with culture-wars lobbyists who push restrictive laws against what they see as society's larger evils.
What often strikes their critics is the disconnection between the gospel they claim they're defending and the human foibles so visible in their own lives.
Of course, outspoken Christians aren't the only people to preach one thing and do another. That's a problem endemic to the human race. It's just more noticeable when it comes from self-proclaimed spokespeople for God.
One of my favorite spiritual writers, the Catholic contemplative Richard Rohr, addressed this problem recently in a series of devotions taken from his earlier writings.
In these devotions, Rohr suggests a radical path for the religious: learn to live your beliefs so fully you don't have to talk about them -- and then let others infer from your example what they will, without direct input from you. I offer up his observations as food for thought.
The core principle of Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation is taken from the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226): "The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better."
In one devotion, "The Joy of Not Counting," Rohr hearkens back to Francis, who chose a remarkable approach to improving himself and maybe in the process quietly nudging the larger culture toward its own betterment as well. See tinyurl.com/3z8b7ra3
Francis arrived on the scene "in the pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war," Rohr writes.
He was the product of that same complicated culture, but as his faith developed, he began to rethink his assumptions.
"Rather than fighting the systems directly and risk becoming their mirror image, Francis just did things differently," Rohr says. "He moved from the common economy of merit to the wondrous economy of grace, where God does not do any counting, but only gives unreservedly."
As the West entered a long, still ongoing cycle of economic production and consumption that would, by our time, threaten the whole planet, Francis chose to love nature and go about barefoot.
"Francis didn't bother questioning Church doctrines and dogmas," Rohr says. "He just took the imitation of Christ seriously and tried to live the way that Jesus lived."
To him, serious believers should function primarily as living, breathing, organic practitioners of Christ-likeness rather than what the contemporary Pope Francis has called "word police," "inspectors" or "museum curators."
Rohr summarizes Francis' tenets: "As the popular paraphrase of a line from Francis's Rule goes, 'Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.'"
In a subsequent devotion, "Living What We Are 'For,'" Rohr takes this idea a step further. See tinyurl.com/yeyphksr
To become spiritually effective, he suggests, people who claim to be followers of Jesus should practice what Rohr calls "non-idolatry ... the withdrawing of our enthrallment from all kingdoms except the kingdom of God."
This nonattachment is more peaceable, and more effective to boot, than constantly lashing out at everybody who isn't part of your particular sect or political party.
"Nonattachment (freedom from loyalties to human-made, domination systems) is the best way I know of protecting people from religious zealotry or any kind of antagonistic thinking or behavior," Rohr writes.
Mainly, Christians shouldn't be obsessed with all the things they're against.
That's a pet peeve of mine, if you want to know: those activists, religious or not, Right or Left, who define themselves by the people and things they hate, never by what they love.
"There is nothing to be against," Rohr argues. "Just keep concentrating on the Big Thing you are for!"
We've gotten so much of Christianity backward, he says.
In the New Testament, St. Paul taught that Christians "were supposed to live inside of an alternative society, almost a utopia, and from such fullness 'go to the world,'" Rohr says.
"Instead, we created a model whereby people live almost entirely in the world, fully invested in its attitudes toward money, war, power, and gender -- and sometimes 'go to church.' This doesn't seem to be working!"
This could be why church membership and attendance are declining:
"Some new studies indicate that Christians are not as much leaving Christianity as they are realigning with [alternative] groups that live Christian values in the world -- instead of just gathering again to hear the readings, recite the creed, and sing songs on Sunday."
Such alternative groups include support groups, prayer groups, study groups, house-building projects and the like, he says.
Now this is a radical concept, isn't it?
What if we who hold what we believe to be Christian views quit trying to push our agenda on others -- and instead concentrated on trying to live our own lives like Jesus lived his life, full of acceptance, mercy and faith? What if we sought to broaden our own relationship with the Lord more than we sought to judge everybody else's relationships? What if we felt more allegiance to the kingdom of God than to some earthly political agenda?
Why, I imagine we'd not only become better disciples, but we'd be more effective at spreading the faith. We'd say less, but accomplish way more.
Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at
pratpd@yahoo.com