we've done enough damage already for the name of christianity

I've started reading a book called Letters from a skeptic. It is a book containing the letters that a father and son wrote during a debate about why the son has his belief in Christ, and the father has his atheist beliefs. The son is in fact a professor of theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

What interests me about this book is that the son invites the father to ask him absolutely anything which challenges him. The first chapter faces the question 'why has christianity done so much harm?'

The son first talks about how without freedom you can't have love but since we have the freedom to love, we also have the freedom to create evil (a typical answer). He carries on to say though that to say that God is responsible for our evil is "to assume that humans are robots who simply act out a divine preplanned program. But if that was the case we could never be loving beings." The answer is pretty typical and not very challenging until you get to the last two paragraphs, and it starts (according to me) to get interesting.

He pulls out the fact that "Christianity isn't a religion or institution of any sort: its a relationship." Something can't be a 'christian organisation' because what is a christian really??

Christianity is used as a label, but is it right to go round slapping the word 'christian' across peoples foreheads? Is it right to say that an organisation is a 'christian organisation'? Because, somewhere along the line, they are bound to mess up what they have set out to do. Their bound to offend people and ruin everything.

Being a christian isn't about hanging out with christian people, going to church and preaching Jesus to who ever you met. Its about the praise and worship you give your Lord. Its about the absolute love you have for Him. Its about acting Jesus to those around you. Sure, just like the 'christian organisation's' we will mess up, offend people and ruin everything. But God knows we are going to do this, thats why He died for us!! And people realise 'christians' are only human, as long as we seek God in everything and just have a passion to love others, i don't think we can go to wrong. Its when a group of people get together, call themselves a 'christian organisation', rally for a cause, and take matters into their own hands, forgetting that theres a) a loving God who grimaces everytime we do this and b) a whole world needing love that things become messy.

Perhaps we need to wipe the slate clean on the 'christian' records. Perhaps, as christians, we need to forget the mind set people have given us. I think we've done enough damage already for the name of christianity.

*i swear none of that made sense, but i hope it does!!*