One of my (many) pet peeves occurs whenever there is a news item of someone who is identified as a Christian who is accused or perhaps convicted of some dreadful wrongdoing, such as molesting young children.

Almost invariably somebody will pipe up and claim, “He’s not really a Christian as far as I’m concerned.” Or something along those lines.

As if being a real Christian somehow makes one morally good, or perhaps only morally upright persons are capable of being Christians.

But as far as I know, the only qualification for being a Christian is believing in Jesus in some form or other (different Christian sects have different views of Jesus). In fact, I’ll amend that to claiming that one believes in Jesus is really the only qualification for being a Christian.

At least that’s the view of Mike Huckabee who would grant clemency to violent criminals while he was governor of Arkansas just because they claimed to have discovered Jesus while incarcerated. Some of those freed went on to rape and kill again.

So I was interested to come across an article that claims:

84% of non-Christians say they know a Christian personally, yet only 15% say the lifestyles of those believers are noticeably different in a good way.

Furthermore, that article then links to some interesting research that was done by the Barna Group in 2013:

To flesh out the objectives of the study, a nationwide, representative sample of Christians was asked to respond to 20 statements. They could rate their agreement on a four-point scale. The 10 research statements used to examine Christ-likeness include the following:

Actions like Jesus:

• I listen to others to learn their story before telling them about my faith.
• In recent years, I have influenced multiple people to consider following Christ.
• I regularly choose to have meals with people with very different faith or morals from me.
• I try to discover the needs of non-Christians rather than waiting for them to come to me.
• I am personally spending time with non-believers to help them follow Jesus.

Attitudes like Jesus:

• I see God-given value in every person, regardless of their past or present condition.
• I believe God is for everyone.
• I see God working in people’s lives, even when they are not following him.
• It is more important to help people know God is for them than to make sure they know they are sinners.
• I feel compassion for people who are not following God and doing immoral things.

The 10 statements used to assess self-righteousness (like the Pharisees), included the following research items:

Self-Righteous Actions:

• I tell others the most important thing in my life is following God’s rules.
• I don’t talk about my sins or struggles. That’s between me and God.
• I try to avoid spending time with people who are openly gay or lesbian.
• I like to point out those who do not have the right theology or doctrine.
• I prefer to serve people who attend my church rather than those outside the church.

Self-Righteous Attitudes:

• I find it hard to be friends with people who seem to constantly do the wrong things.
• It’s not my responsibility to help people who won’t help themselves.
• I feel grateful to be a Christian when I see other people’s failures and flaws.
• I believe we should stand against those who are opposed to Christian values.
• People who follow God’s rules are better than those who do not.

They concluded that 51% of self-identified Christians tend to have attitudes and actions that are characterized by self-righteousness. They referred to them as more like the Pharisees than Jesus, but the Pharisees are commonly misunderstood, and I’ll have a post on them shortly.

Only about 14% of self-identified Christians seem to represent the actions and attitudes of Jesus.

Make of that what you will.