I remember it as though it were yesterday. I was driving east on Poplar Avenue in Memphis when I noticed a bumper sticker on the car in front of me. The large letters said, “I AM A GENERIC CHRISTIAN.” That got my attention. I never thought about anyone being a generic Christian. I saw that something else was written on the bumper sticker and I wanted to know what it was. I’m afraid I got dangerously close to the rear end of that fellow so that I could read what else was there. It said, “Ask me what I mean.”
That intrigued me even more. What was that person trying to say? “I’m a generic Christian. Ask me what I mean.” My interest was further whetted by the fact that the sticker was on an $80,000 Mercedes. I wondered how anyone driving such a car could be a generic anything. A couple of blocks on down the street, the driver pulled into Mr. Pride Carwash and I couldn’t resist. I didn’t need a car wash but I turned in behind him because I wanted to speak to the driver and find out what he meant with that intriguing message on the bumper of his Mercedes.
The fellow told me he was a member of a local congregation, but he was so tired of denomination emphases and sectarian politics in the church that he wanted to proclaim a different kind of message. He wanted the world to know that he was a Christian, not any label — hence a generic Christian.
The fellow had a point in relation to competitive denominationalism. But a larger issue needs our special attention today. It may surprise you to know what many Americans consider to be the most serious sin. It’s not murder. Even murder can have mitigating factors. Many Americans today consider the worst sin to be intolerance. Check the incessant conversation about exclusion and inclusion.
Dr. Laura, the popular and controversial radio host, has talked about the large volume of hate mail she receives for believing in moral absolutes. Her enemies ask her to be more tolerant of other moral views, but they don’t want to tolerate her views.
It amazes me that persons like Diana Eck, Harvard professor and founder of the Pluralism Project, gets so much press as she claims that the God of Israel and the Church is far too “exclusive.” Her vision is that a new geo-religious reality will evolve where Hindu deities are worshiped under the same roof with Allah; Buddhist mediation co-exists with the Christian sacraments, and no faith claims any monopoly for the truth. The attention she gets is as though she is saying something new. The challenge of religious pluralism and the temptation to syncretism have been around throughout religious history. No religion is without its absolutist claims. We are not valuing them and respecting their right to religious belief, by expecting them to give up their absolutists claim, and join us as together we believe in “religion in general.”
Sure, we must respect the rights of others to believe as they will, but we Christians can’t be “generic.” We should be so confident of the gospel and its power that we passionately share it. We don’t even begin to pretend that Jesus’ claim, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” is not exclusive. But with that is the inclusive offer, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”