Or, you know, you could always treat people with respect

Dear World Magazine: The snarky and sarcastic headline I’ve reproduced below aside, has it ever occurred to you that treating people like asses is counter to what Christ said about, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?

The headline in question: “Seven steps to not offending homosex—I mean, gays at the DOJ.” The article itself is even worse.

Seriously, even back when I was still a good little conservative, treating people like rubbish because I disagreed with them was not something that crossed my mind. You should always treat people with dignity and respect even if you don’t agree with things in their life.

This is the kind of thing that’s why I’m over evangelicalism. Conservative American Christianity acts like being a jerk to people you disagree with is somehow their God-given right. It’s antithetical to how Christ treated people. I’ve lost patience with this kind of smug, sarcastic, priggish behavior.

I keep sources like World in my twitter feed because I don’t want to live in an echo chamber, but between World, John Piper, and some of the people from my past, all it’s doing is making me loathe conservative evangelicalism. Sometimes I think that the smug judgmental pricks in the evangelical world and the PCA are deliberately trying to drive people away from the faith. I certainly don’t believe because of those people — if I were looking to the persons of my past life as my only examples of faith and Christianity, they’d make me an atheist. No, I believe in spite of those people, because I believe that the message of the Gospel is one that can and does change lives and the model Christ lived is one that can change the world if people only followed his example. Instead, they’re busy living like Pharisees, convinced of their own righteousness while their hearts are full of filth and their actions drive people away from the kingdom.

You want to know why young people are losing their faith? It’s because the faith you modeled is a twisted, grotesque perversion of the Gospel.

Edit: Because this song, which was one of my favorites when I was a teenager, is now stuck in my head, I thought I’d add it to the post.