What is missing in the Pew Research Report?

In my past life of being a salesman, I was often reminded that perception is the way things are to that person, it does not mean the customer is correct in their observation but it does mean that is their belief or awareness of the subject.  I often found it was not based on logic or data, but on exposure, the current product or belief was all they had experienced.

With that backdrop of perception, it is the way it is to you; we must come to grips with this fact, the number of Americans who self-identify as Christians has dropped from 78 percent to 71 percent according to the Pew Research Center, which has just released its latest U.S. Religious Landscape Study.  As a follower of Christ, what is my perception of being a Christian, and how can 7% who make this claim quit being a Christian?

First, let’s look at what Scripture says about Christians, when did the term come into being?  At Antioch and you can find that in Acts 11:26, but that does not answer the question, why at Antioch?  The answer lies in a scattered group being persecuted and fleeing Jerusalem after the death of Stephen one of the first of a group called The Way, followers of Jesus Christ, over 500 had seen the risen Lord.  This first group had this understanding, Jesus was God, He lived and walked among them, He taught, He healed, and He died on a cross, for in doing so He overcame death and the grave, for on the third day He arose victorious over both the grave and death.  And he was seen by eleven of His disciples and the apostle Paul gives this account; “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of who are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-9)

So as one who believes this to be 100% correct, I’m basing being a Christian not on a religion or a denominational belief, but on entering a relationship with Jesus based on faith that He tells the truth.  And as I’ve shared with you often, I was a religious person, a member of the Baptist church, who believed Jesus was God, who gave ten percent of my income some of the time, and yet had never ask Jesus to forgive me, I had often tried to make deals with Him but had never ask Him to come into my heart and be the Lord of all my being, till one night in a hotel room after reading Romans 10:9-10, “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” and by faith acting on the grace He gives freely, I entered into Christ’s time line, and it has no beginning or end, I was changed.  And this is what happened that night: “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. (Matthew 14:20)

 

I was changed from religious Baptist Bob to a new creation in Christ, I was not a strong follower of Christ, but that came as I grew in my understanding of what He had done, and was doing in my life, but I was a Christian.  So if your definition of being a Christian is based on Scripture, on the finished work of Christ on the cross, where did the 7% go?  How does one get out of the Father, out of Christ, who is living in them, and they in Him?  For we have this word from Jesus; “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30)

My dad was a very wise man, a man of the Scripture, and he often would remind me that a word to the wise was sufficient, this is a word to the wise: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? —unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (1 Corinthians 13:5)  A wrong perception of truth does not change truth!

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice