Are You Embarrassed About Jesus?

I saw this NYT article on the sidebar of Google News and started reading it.  How tragic!!  This 'evangelical' home is raising their kids to believe in Jesus and even taking them to Sunday School....but when the kids DARE to pray at dinner when the neighbors are over...they are EMBARRASSED!!

This is a must read if you want to see how shallow some proclaimed followers of Christ actually are.

As you read this, ask yourselves if we are guilty of this behavior as well.  Are you embarrassed by Jesus?

While Dwayne and I have never sought to conceal our faith — anyone who spends more than a couple of evenings with us will find out we’re Christians — we also don’t talk openly or easily about our backgrounds as missionary kids raised in the evangelical church.

We both work in higher education and run in circles that are highly educated and liberal. In our community, intellect is the only viable form of religion, and the fact that I’m a Christian calls into question my intellectual grit. When my colleagues find out, they are hard-pressed to reconcile the bright, open woman they see before them with the stereotypes they understand about evangelicals. You know the ones: judgmental, anti-intellectual, homophobic, which we are not.

We are the types of young adult Christians who love our faith, but who’ve moved slightly left of center. Just enough so that we have to keep our social and political views quiet in our faith communities. On the other hand, we have to tamp down the religious talk in our work and social communities. I am constantly negotiating how much of myself to share in either group.

Nothing embodies the tension I feel around integrating my identity into both these communities like Noelle’s first explorations with faith. She is extroverted and vocal in ways I am not brave enough to be. She is unselfconscious — completely unaware of the stereotypes that linger around conservative faith.

As I pulled the car into the driveway, I thought about when we had one of our favorite families over for dinner a few nights before. Dwayne and I had immediately connected with Brad and Jen because they’d moved from San Francisco. We’d spent seven years in L.A. (another place not exactly jumping for joy over evangelicals).

While we’d talked about the West Coast and ate our black bean soup, Noelle’s sweet voice suddenly rang out above the racket. “Wait! We forgot to pray!”

I felt Jen stiffen beside me. Jen grew up without any kind of religion, and she and Brad raise their children similarly — without religious beliefs.

There I sat: perched between not wanting to make our guests feel uncomfortable, but also not wanting to squash the tender shoots of Noelle’s faith. She beamed up at me, proud to have remembered something as important as prayer.

“O.K.,” I’d said to Noelle. “You pray.” It’s hard to judge a cute little girl praying. 

But it’s also risky letting her pray because she likes to insert Bible lessons — lessons I’d never tell non-Christian friends. Such as: “Thank you, Jesus, for coming down from heaven and dying on the cross for our sins.” Or better yet, “Thank you, Jesus, for your blood that has washed us white as snow.”

Please God, I pleaded. Don’t let her say anything embarrassing. 

Here;  http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/05/jesus-lives-but-should-he-live-in-my-front-yard/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1

OH MY GOODNESS!!!  The "Christian" mother PLEADED with God to not let her little daughter embarrass her in front of a neighbor by praying something about Jesus!!

Oh yes, you next have to click on the comments and read what other people wrote in to this author in response.

If you want to see a barometer for how much The Church has lost its saltiness....please read all of this article and then ask yourself how many people like this author are sitting in the church pews all across America...ASHAMED of their Christ?

Mark 8:38
If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

Matthew 5:13
 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.