What's Behind It?

I was talking with a good friend of mine. He had found the woman of his dreams. He planned to marry her. She had all the characteristics he wanted and he was in love. Well, all except one -- she wasn't a Christian. It was okay, he assured me, because she was honest about it. She didn't claim to be a Christian. Here was his reasoning: It's very common for people to claim to be Christians and not be, so this was better than that.

It is a very common approach. (Admittedly his reasoning was not quite like that. Honesty requires that his real "reasoning" was "I'm in love with this girl and I'm not really concerned about anything else." But I'm addressing the approach, not his reality.) "If something can be wrong with it, it doesn't matter." How many times have I heard it? People committed atrocities in the name of Christianity, so Christianity must be bad. This or that doctrine has been taken to mean something that is obviously false -- and evil -- so this or that doctrine is wrong. It is possible to take orthodoxy to the wrong place, so orthodoxy is wrong. Too many people claim to be Christians that aren't, so it doesn't matter if you're a Christian.

One would think the error was obvious, but it is so common that I have to conclude that it's not. Let's look at an easy example. "Since a car can be used to run people over, a car must be evil." Now, we all know that cars are neither good nor evil. They're things. What a person does with them is either good or evil. They can be used to kill or to heal. They can be used to injure people or they can take the injured to the hospital to heal them. They can be a method for a drunk driver to kill someone or they can be a method for a good Samaritan to take meals to the elderly. The car is not the issue.

It's the same thing here. What someone does with Christianity doesn't determine the truth or error of Christianity. What someone does with orthodoxy or doctrine doesn't determine the truth or error of orthodoxy or doctrine. Because something can be abused doesn't determine the truth or error of the thing.

Now, I have to say, I would think this would be self-evident. I don't think, with a little thought, that anyone would actually disagree. It is my suspicion that my friend's reality is more common than we like to admit. These arguments that "It can be abused so it's wrong" are more likely due to an underlying belief or feeling, not a cause. I suspect that it's not the argument that they're sustaining; it's the underlying position. Maybe that's the better place to start.