Why are unbelievers hostile toward the church?

It is a common thing for Christians to side with non-Christians against other Christians. The reason for this is that we are sinners, Christians, non-Christians and the other Christians. That is, Christian A listens with a sympathetic ear while non-Christian B recounts how he was terribly mistreated by Christians C. Christian A, you understand, could be sympathetic because he rightly feels bad about the mistreatment non-Christian B received. Or, Christian A could be sympathetic simply because he wants non-Christian B to like him, and Christians C did nothing wrong at all. Sin, blame shifting and a craven hunger for approval are as commonplace as ABC.

The point is that non-Christians get hostile against the church for all manner of illegitimate reasons. They accuse Christians of things they are not guilty of. They themselves feel guilty for things they are guilty of, but prefer to blame the Christians. Non-Christians also get hostile against the church for all manner of legitimate reasons. The church, after all, if full of sinners. Sinners sin. To assume that only one of these things could be true is to assume that only one group of people are capable of sin.

That said, I suspect the best argument the non-Christian has against the Christian isn’t that the Christian is too judgmental toward others, but that we are insufficiently judgmental toward ourselves. People, as a general rule, are reasonably comfortable having their sins pointed out, so long as we acknowledge the full depth and scope of our own sin. “You and I are miserable sinners” goes down much more easily than “You are a miserable sinner. I am good.” Better still, “You and I are miserable sinners” is true and “I am good” is not.

There is, however, yet another option. Sometimes I suspect that non-Christians have nothing but contempt for the church because we are so weak. Our hunger for their approval may just bring down on us their disapproval. No one admires a sniveler. When we insist that we never say a word that might offend them we demonstrate to them that we fear them. They may rant and rail against us for the moral stances we take, but at the end of the day, caving just makes it worse. Worse still, it offends the One we ought to be seeking to please.

The solution? What if we were altogether eager to affirm both the sins of the non-Christians and the sins of the Christians, all while being careful to define sin as God does? What if we honestly and sincerely responded to that old complaint from outside our walls, “The church is full of hypocrites!” with “No, not true. It’s not full. There’s always room for one more.” What if, instead of trying to decide whether to stand with the Christians or the non-Christians we determined to kneel before Christ? What if we humbled ourselves not before them, but before Him? What if the church were that place where we competed to see who could be the most open, the most honest about our own failures, and then the most open and most honest about His provision? There is no good plan, for those inside the church or those outside, where we don’t talk about sin. Never has been and never will be.