The Seven Pointless Things That Christians Fight About

Growing up as a Pastor’s kid in the eighties gave me a front-row pew to the kind of vitriol and anger that can emerge from an otherwise lovely and mild-mannered Christian when you say or do something that challenges their strongly held beliefs.

When my country conducted a nationwide plebiscite on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, the Senior Pastor of my old church went on a one-man campaign to lobby for the “no” vote, distributing literature warning people about the horrifying moral slippery slope we would find ourselves on if we allowed certain people — most of whom won’t have anything to do with the church — the freedom to marry the person who they actually love.

I remember the look of righteous indignation that the pastor gave me when I dared to suggest that the world would not end if same-sex couples got married, and — shock, horror — maybe God was not as offended by the idea as he was. I soon learned that it was pointless to try to argue with this man.

Christians have a habit of taking the moral high ground, staking claim to some ideological position on a particular issue — even if that issue, when you boil it down, doesn’t even matter all that much in the grand scheme of things, or worse when their position is just plain wrong. If there is an argument to be had about matters of doctrine, many Christians are up for the fight.

At the risk of being accused of embellishment, what follows are my real-life observations from over 35 years in the evangelical church system. None of this is made up. Christians fight about the darndest things… but much of it is pointless. Here are seven things that Christians fight about that really don’t matter all that much:

1. The “biblical inerrancy” argument

Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible is without error or fault in all its teaching or, at least, that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything contrary to fact.

Many Christians affirm this view and, if you want to get accused of sliding down the ‘slippery slope’ of liberalism — as I have — then humbly suggest to some Christians that the Bible might not be completely perfect.

Did Jonah really get swallowed by a whale? Did Noah really build an ark? And were Adam and Eve real historical people? Well, how could we possibly know that since they were supposedly the only ones around to see it? And does it really matter? Actually, no.

It turns out the essence of the Adam and Eve story is not lost if, it turned out, that Adam and Eve were mythical characters.

Why?

Because the point of the story of Adam and Eve is less about introducing two historical figures than it is about archetypally representing the problem of the human condition. We are supposed to find ourselves in Adam and Eve.

That’s the thing with the Bible. It is not supposed to read as a book of history but rather a book of theology, revealing to us what we are like and what God is like. So, I will happily call the Bible inspired, sacred, authoritative, and useful, but I can’t call it faultless because, well… humans wrote it.

I think Jesus Christ, of all people, would understand my reluctance to trust religious people who claim to have the very words of God.

The “predestination vs. free will” argument

Predestination is the belief that everything that happens has been pre-determined in advance by God. Under this line of thinking, everything that has happened and is going to happen is already set in stone — including those people whom God has decided to allow into heaven or not — and therefore, free will is merely an illusion.

Some Christians reject this idea, though, believing instead that we write our own histories through the gift of free will that God has given us. Nothing is entirely set in stone.

I know of Christians who stand on street corners and loudly proclaim the merits of each position. This might be interesting to argue, but it is ultimately pointless. If everything that happens is predetermined, how can we even know that? (It certainly feels like I chose to sit down at my computer this morning and type this blog post).

Therefore, we might as well carry on as if we have unlimited free will. The following story best illustrates the futility of the “predestination vs. free will” argument:

A group of theologians were discussing the tension between predestination and free will. Things became so heated that the group broke up into two opposing factions. But one man, not knowing which to join, stood for a moment trying to decide. Then, at last, he joined the predestination group.

“Who sent you here?” they asked.

“No one sent me,” he replied. “I came of my own free will.”

“Free will!” they exclaimed. “You can’t join us! You belong with the other group!”

So he followed their orders and went to the other group. There someone asked, “When did you decide to join us?”

The young man replied, “Well, I didn’t really decide — I was sent here.”

“Sent here!” they shouted. “You can’t join us unless you have decided by your own free will!”

The “creation vs. evolution” argument

When I was a teenager in a Christian youth group, I remember the church dedicating entire evenings to convince us of the foolishness of evolution as if it were the archenemy of faith. We were trained to stand up to our high school science teachers, as part of our faithful Christian witness for the Lord, when they made the mistake of teaching evolution as if it were some kind of fact.

In reality, faith and evolution do not need to be mutually exclusive. They can coexist and even complement each other. If the world adapted and changed over millions of years through some evolutionary process, as the evidence suggests, that does not prove or disprove anything with respect to faith.

After all, to call yourself a Christian, you only need to believe that God is the author of life. How he undertook that process is immaterial. Perhaps he used an evolutionary process to create the world. You are not a wicked heretic for believing that.

The “young-earth” argument

The close cousin of the “creation vs. evolution” argument, many Christians enjoy having a good fight about how old the Earth is.

Don’t get me wrong. It is fascinating to speculate how old the Earth might be. The archaeological record suggests that the Earth is billions and billions of years old. However, I have met Christians who believe that to suggest the Earth is anything more than about ten thousand years old is akin to denying your faith.

It might also be flat, right?

In reality, the age of the Earth does not prove or disprove anything about God. The only thing you have to believe to be a Christian is that — however old the earth is — God set it all in motion.

The “who you should vote for” argument

My own experience of evangelical church life tells me that the widely-held assumption is that all Christians will vote for parties on the conservative side of the political spectrum.

It is a well-established fact that white, evangelical protestant Christians overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump and his presidency to the point where “Evangelical Christian” became a synonym for “Trump Supporter.”

However, in my home country, Australia, I believe that the more progressive political parties often have ideas more aligned with the compassion and grace that Christianity is supposed to espouse, particularly pertaining to welfare, foreign aid, equality, asylum seekers, and the environment.

However, many Christians will argue that the ‘Christian’ thing to do is to vote for conservatives because conservatives will usually offer the church certain protections that more progressive governments won’t guarantee, and well… the church seems to be more interested in self-preservation than the ministry of serving the poor and needy.

The “who is saved and not saved” argument

Growing up in an evangelical church, I was constantly exposed to the conversation about who is saved and who is not saved. I remember an occasion where a young man known in our community but not part of the church tragically died after coming off his motorbike.

The pastor of my church got up and shared the news with the congregation and saw fit to add these words: “Unfortunately, this young man was not saved. We can only hope in the split-second before his head hit the concrete, that he accepted Jesus as his Lord and savior.”

How grotesquely insensitive.

The idea of accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior is a new one. There is no such terminology in the Bible. But for some reason, Christians picked up the idea that if you prayed a prayer to receive Christ once, then you’re all good!

For Christians, it seems that there is a line to be crossed or a wall to be scaled to “be saved.” A lot of energy is invested into getting people to cross this line by saying the magic words. In fact, I would suggest that the majority of the church’s time and resources are put into trying to “get people saved.”

Who is saved and not saved is a source of constant speculation and fascination for Christians. However, I have a firmly held suspicion that it would be just like God to completely disregard the boundary markers that human beings have established. So, perhaps Christians should invest more of their time in saving people from other things — like poverty or abuse or systems of injustice and oppression. Perhaps, then, people would be more open to receiving the savior that Christians proclaim.

After all, salvation is a matter of the heart, and only God knows the heart of a person. Therefore, I will leave the job of being God to God.

The “how we worship” argument

I have witnessed fully-grown, supposedly mature, adult Christians screaming at each other across church meetings about things that could only be described as peripheral to the Christian faith.

Some of these issues, considered by some good Christians to be worth destroying relationships over, include: Where the communion table should be positioned in the sanctuary, Whether drums should be allowed in church, What kinds of songs we should sing, and the volume, speed, and pitch of those songs; Whether women should be allowed to preach; and What version of the Bible we should read from.

And I could go on.

I think a sure sign of the maturity of people is their ability to hold the tension of disagreeing with another while still maintaining mutual respect. Sadly, this kind of maturity seems to be missing from many churches.

Back in the good old days — I’m talking about thousands of years ago — there was one church. Just one. But these days, according to the online publication Live Science, there are over 200 Christian denominations in the USA and over 45000 across the globe. Many of these denominations have sprung up through unresolved church conflict.

This is hardly a glowing endorsement of Christianity — a religion that is supposed to unify believers around the person of Jesus Christ.

Choose the hill you want to die on

The sad thing about this article is that I could probably go on. I haven’t even touched on how Christians argue about drinking or dancing, human sexuality, or gender roles, or how about the vast and varied views on the “end of the world.”

The hill you want to die on describes something so important to you that you are willing to fight to the death to accomplish it. Many Christians will end relationships — even fight to the death — over things that really don’t matter all that much.

Choose the hill you want to die on.

Jesus Christ chose the right hill to die on. It wasn’t an ideological hill based on his need to be right. Instead, it was a hill of surrender, of letting go, and of laying down for the sake of others.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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