Were You Ever Disappointed by a Label?

HAVE you ever bought a product with an attractive label, only to find that it did not match the label’s claims? You were disappointed, were you not? You probably decided not to buy that product again. Millions of people today have had a similar experience with religion. They were attracted initially by the “Christian” label and then were put off by what they saw and experienced.

According to statistics, nearly one in four of the world’s population is supposed to be Christian. In the Americas and in Europe the proportion is even higher. But do statistics give a true picture? What about yourself? Were you baptized into a Christian religion? If so, do you consider yourself to be a Christian? Or is it just a label?

To illustrate what we mean, let us take two examples: Spain, a Catholic country, and the United Kingdom, a Protestant land. One encyclopedia lists Spain’s religious affiliation for the mid-1960’s as follows: Roman Catholic, 31,200,000; Protestant, 43,000; Jewish, 5,000. Thus, theoretically, Spain is 99.85 percent Christian. Yet, as in most countries, Spain has its proportion of atheists, agnostics, lapsed Catholics and Protestants. Certainly 99.85 percent do not go to church every week, nor even every year!

The same applies to the United Kingdom, although to a greater degree. The same encyclopedia presents the population by religion as follows: Church of England, 27,500,000; Roman Catholic, 6,000,000, and other figures for the remaining principal religions. How many of those 27,500,000 are really churchgoing Anglicans? Very few, to judge by official attendance figures. Not even 10 percent attend at the time of the normally high turnout for the Easter celebration.

So what does this indicate? That there is often a difference between the church label and the product. It is one thing to profess to be an Anglican or a Catholic, but it is another matter to be a practicing member of those faiths. Likewise, it is one thing to profess to be a Christian, but it is actually an entirely different matter to be a Christian, or a Christlike person.

‘What is a Christian anyway?’ you might ask. Ideas vary on this, but see if yours coincide with any of the following popular views:

Anybody who believes in Jesus Christ.

Anybody who was baptized in a Christian church.

A person who belongs to and attends a Christian church.

Anybody who does no harm to his neighbor and helps out when he can.

Someone who lives by the Bible.

Only those who have been “born again.”

Only those who believe in the pope.

Yes, opinions are many and varied, so much so that religious writer and university lecturer Ninian Smart was moved to write: “Christianity is the most mysterious of the great religions. . . . It ranges from Eastern Orthodoxy, through Catholicism, to a great variety of Protestant churches and sects. . . . It can approve war and pacifism, monasteries and secular attitudes, hierarchy and democracy, preaching and ritual, philosophers and those who reject philosophy.”

But is that really true? Can genuine Christianity approve war, secular attitudes and so many other contradictory activities that have been condoned in Christendom over the last few decades? What is genuine Christianity? And is modern Christianity genuine?