Did Jesus Have Bad PR?
History’s Most Diverse Movement
Christianity was a multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural movement from the beginning. If we look at the history of the world and we look at the situation of the global church today, we find that Christianity is, hands down, the most diverse movement in all of history. Yet we think that saying that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life somehow undermines diversity.
Christianity is, hands down, the most diverse movement in all of history.
Jesus elevated the status of women to be equal to men in a way that was radically countercultural at the time and that has echoed through history and changed and shaped how human history has unfolded since. Today, cultures that have been shaped by Christianity give women far more opportunity, far more protection, and far more respect than those that have not. Yet we think that Christianity denigrates women.
Christians at Fault
Now, none of this is to say that Christians have a flawless record in any of these areas. We don’t. The reason that Jesus has bad PR is because of people like me: Christians who are failing to live up to the biblical standards that we are given. That is without a doubt.
Confronting Christianity
Rebecca McLaughlin
Addressing 12 controversial issues about Christianity—the Bible’s teaching on gender and sexuality, the reality of heaven and hell, and more—this book shows how current psychological and scientific research actually aligns with teaching from the Bible.
But, the irony is that even those standards by which we are judging Christianity are, in most cases, standards that Christianity has given to us. So Jesus has bad PR, but if you actually fact check his record, you find that it shines like nothing else—and you start to wonder if the claim that Jesus really is the Savior of the world could actually become quite credible.
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