There is an African proverb that says, “When the missionaries came, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”

From the crusades, to the inquisition, to slavery, colonialism and sexual abuse scandals – time and time again horrific evil has been committed in the name of God and His Son Jesus Christ. 

In many western cultures Christian sexual ethics have been seen as offensive, hurtful, and damaging towards people’s identity and freedom to live out their chosen identity. It confuses people how a religion of love can’t seem to accept that ‘all love is love.’

Apparently this quote it was not Gandhi but 20th century Indian philosopher Bara Dada who said, “Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians — you are not like him.”

Either way – Ouch.

There are three other objections that result from this negative experience and view of Christians and Christianity:

1. I don’t want to become a Christian if it means being on the same side as those people
2. I don’t want to become a Christian if it means ending up like those people
3. The message of Christianity can’t be true because of those people

There is no value in denying the truth of the problems nor in minimizing them by comparing them with other horrific examples of evil. Wrong is wrong, evil is evil. Let’s call it what it is.

Let’s start though with the last objection: that Christianity can’t be true because of the actions of many people who claimed to be Christians but who then went on to commit such tragic evil deeds.

This is not just theory for me, there are men who I have prayed with and for, listened to their teaching, and been led in worship by who are currently in prison for crimes they committed and then hid. It is deeply confusing to hear them say this and then to discover they did that. I get it.

The Bible Already Expects Hypocrisy

Perhaps, the first thing we need to consider, is that Christian teaching tells us we shouldn’t be at all surprised by this. The Bible explains, time and time again, that the hearts of people are continually and powerfully drawn towards actions and attitudes of self-interest, that end up corrupting us and drawing us not closer but further away from God. The Bible teaches the reality of sin, not in some human hearts but in every human heart.

The Bible is also disarmingly frank about the failures of its heroes: Jacob was a cheat, Abraham a liar, Moses a murderer, David an adulterer, Peter a coward, Paul a persecutor. 

A hypocrite is an inconsistent person. Someone who does not always live up to their own ideals. Saying one thing and doing another and then putting up a front. 

There are people like that in the church. Sometimes that can be said of me. I know that my thoughts, words, attitudes no matter how hard I try do not always live up to the ideals of compassion, love, grace and forgiveness that I am deeply committed to. So when it comes to being honest about being an inconsistent person, or in other words, a hypocrite – I have to hold my own hand up. There aren’t many people whose lives really match their talk. None of us is as kind or patient or generous as we know we should be, or even as we want to be.

This is not a new phenomenon. Jesus confronted religious hypocrisy and in fact some of his most forceful words come to those he saw as exemplifying the problem.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” – Matthew 23

The Bible teaches us that in the Church, every person is a sinner. In fact the only way you can become a Christian is by first admitting that you are a sinner. If you never admit that you are a sinner then you are not a Christian and may never have been. 

American Theologian RC Sproul said, “There is no slander in the charge that the church is full of sinners. Such a statement would only compliment the church for fulfilling her divinely appointed task.”

Not only that but the church is supposed to have broken, sinful people in it. That’s why Jesus came.  

Jesus acknowledges that this problem is present in the religion of his day, as it is in our day, because it is a problem within people. All people, in all places, at all times. It is a universal fault and one that required a universal solution.

You’re Already Like “Those People”

And Jesus’ response to those two objections — ‘I don’t want to be on the same side as those people‘ and ‘I don’t want to end up like those people’— is both uncomfortable and strangely liberating. 

He would say: ‘it’s too late. You’re already like those people!’ And so am I. The ground is level here. Nobody walks into a church because they’ve got it together. We walk in because we don’t. The church was never meant to be a showcase for sorted people — it was meant to be a hospital for broken ones. The problem is we’ve sometimes forgotten that.

What we discover then that the church is full of people who are broken and flawed, who do broken things and cause harm. Just like outside the church. And that Christianity, like any other ideology, whether secular or religious, can be co-opted for evil ends.

So Why Believe Christianity At All?

So if Christians are no better than anyone else and Christianity no different than anything else, then why believe it?

The answer to that is simple: Jesus.

Now I know how that sounds. It sounds like I’m saying — ‘don’t judge Christianity by Christians, judge it by Jesus’ — which is a very convenient thing for a Christian to say. But think about it this way. If someone showed you a forged Rembrandt, you wouldn’t conclude that Rembrandt couldn’t paint. You’d go and look at the real thing. The forgeries only work because there is an original. And every crime committed in the name of Christ only makes sense as a betrayal because there is a Jesus against whom we can measure it. You can’t call the Crusades un-Christian without having a Christ to be un-like.

If Jesus is the Son of God, then we have to take his teaching seriously. If he is not who he says he is, why should we care what the Bible says about anything else?

It is because of Jesus that we can judge whether the actions of his followers, or indeed of anyone else, are right or wrong. Every crime I mentioned at the start: theft of land, abuse of people, slavery, murder, jealousy, pride, greed is not only condemned by Jesus but shown up in stark contrast to the life and teachings of Jesus.

If western values of justice, dignity, and care for the vulnerable really are Christian in origin — then the church’s failures to embody those values are not just moral failures, they are a betrayal of Christianity’s own deepest logic. The church isn’t just failing generic human ethics; it’s specifically failing Christian ethics. These objections against Christianity — that it has been unequal, coercive, cruel, anti-science — are themselves Christian objections. 

As historian Tom Holland powerfully points out human rights, the dignity of the individual, care for the weak, equality before the law, the concept of progress, have not come about despite Christianity but because of it.  

Think about it. Slavery was undone because Christians won the argument that slaveholders were being sub-Christian. The abuse of children was normalised in the ancient world — it was Christianity that said every child bears the image of God. Racism is a sin because Scripture insists that God has called people from every tribe and nation. These aren’t secular achievements that Christianity later baptised. They are Christian achievements, often won at great cost.

And the reason that Christians taught, fought and died for these concepts is because of the example of their founder Jesus Christ.

Christianity’s Deepest Logic

Jesus is the standard by which we see how far those who claim to be his followers have fallen. But Jesus also claims to be the only way by which people can be given life and set on a path that leads us to victory over even our greatest failures and freedom from its guilt and shame. Let’s consider that claim.

In a conversation with some disciples who were struggling to understand the events of Easter in light of the Scriptures, Jesus appears to them while they’re walking the road to Emmaus. He takes the time to show them, “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

We can live, and read the Bible as if it is all about us, about me. If you think the Bible is all about you – what you must do and how you must live – then you don’t need Jesus. All you need are rules. Follow the rules about what you must do to please God and be a good person. That’s one way of living and one way of reading the Bible.

In fact most religions operate on this principle: “If I live as I ought, I will be accepted by God.”

But that is not Christianity’s operating principle. It is the opposite.

“If I am accepted by God as a gift through what Christ has done, then I will try to live as I ought.”

It is not about what you do. The Bible is all about Jesus and about what Christ has done for you.

So what is that?

Jesus sacrificed his own life so that his followers could be reconciled to God. Jesus, on the cross took all that sin, all that pain, all the wrong things you’ve ever done and all the wrong things that have ever been done to you and he took them to the grave. And buried them. Because he was fully human he could represent me and stand in my place, but because He was fully God he was able to carry the sins not just of a few people but of all people. 

That’s why the symbol of Christianity is not a golden throne but a wooden cross. It is not just the place where Jesus died but where sin died too. 

But the story doesn’t end there because God raised him up from the dead on the third day ensuring Christ was victorious over sin and death, demonstrating that the way to life is through death, the way to forgiveness is through repentance and the way to God is through Jesus. 

Martin Luther — another deeply flawed hero, as it so happens — said something worth thinking about: ‘All of life is repentance.’ 

Not a one-time transaction. Not a box you tick on the way in. A daily returning. Which means that the most authentically Christian person in the room is not the one who has it most together, but the one who is most honestly aware that they don’t. That’s not lowering the bar. That’s understanding what the bar actually is.

The heart of Christianity is the revelation of a God who surrenders all his power so that those who least deserve it could live. That in Christ God takes all that belonged to you: your sin, shame, old identity and gives you what belonged to Jesus: his righteousness, his name, his life.

The effect of the Christian message is that it changes your identity. Your identity becomes defined by what God has done for you in Jesus, in what God thinks of you in Jesus. Tim Keller put it better than I can: ‘We are more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe, yet more loved and accepted in Jesus than we ever dared hope.’

And because of these twin truths this new identity in Jesus should show itself in renewed attitudes towards people of other races and classes, towards the poor and oppressed, towards people of differing political convictions or religious beliefs.

Bara Dada was right. We are not like him. But the extraordinary claim of Christianity is that he became like us — so that one day, finally, we might become like him.  

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This post was taken from a sermon (lightly edited for reading) preached at Grace Church. You can listen to it below.