Make Me A Christian

Channel 4 have an interesting 3 part series at the moment, it's called 'Make Me A Christian.' There are several people who have one thing in common, they are not Christians and are living lives that are opposed to some core aspects of Christian morality. Including a lap dancing witch, a lesbian an Atheist, a white Muslim and several others. They have been given mentors from 4 different wings of the Christian church to help them on their journey to the Christian faith. Channel 4 are not exactly known for being sympathetic to the Christian faith. Yet the commentary and the volunteers were all fairly open with the exception of the militant atheist, who did have a lot of valid questions that remained unanswered. Although I found the show interesting there was a couple of problems at the core of the show. Firstly the four representatives from the church have serious differences about what exactly is a Christian. The second one and for me the most serious flaw was the whole show (including the two evangelicals) seemed to be concerned with reforming the morals of the volunteers, Christianising them. This made the Christians appear judgemental and Christianity appear like a law based religion. For example the Rev George Hargreaves, A Pentecostal went round a young ladies house and cleared away all her witchcraft paraphernalia and told her to stop sleeping with her boyfriend. I agree both of these are wrong from a Christian point of view but she wasn't a Christian. Saul of Tarsus wasn't a believer when he met the LORD Jesus on the road to Damascus. Yet Jesus didn't tell him to clean up his life, Saul was converted and his life got changed completely he was transformed before he reformed. Gerard Gilbert picks up on this in article in the Independent newspaper 'And then there was all the confiscation of personal effects that the mentors considered obscene, such as the kinky personal photographs and soft-core lesbian erotica belonging to Laura, a schoolteacher. The process seemed dictated by the need for conflict, or at least action, but it pointed up a fundamental flaw in Make Me a Christian. This was Christianity as a code of behaviour. But do you become a Christian because you act like one, or do you act like one because you believe in a living Christ? Any theological issues were always going to struggle for airtime in a series tied to this format, a series that doesn't know whether it is being Kim and Aggie for the soul, a Gillian McKeith for moral flab, or just a novel twist on Ladette to Lady.'

I realise the program was edited and we didn't get to see if the gospel was shared and I am still thankful to channel 4 for making this show. Hopefully it will lead to some fruitful conversations about what exactly is a Christian.

God Bless

Stephen