Are Christian Statistical Researchers Like Jesus, the Pharisees, or Oliver Stone?

Through a college friend’s Facebook page I became aware of the Barna Group’s new survey entitled “Are Christians More Like Jesus or More Like the Pharisees.” I predict widespread popularity for the article, since it has three things going for it: (a) It comes from the Barna Group, (b) It provides an opportunity for Christians to denigrate other Christians and other churches, and (c) It hurls the ever-popular epithet “Pharisee” while doing so. Really, it’s a can’t-miss survey.

There’s nothing new about people’s claiming that they’re like Jesus while other people are not (see “Historical Jesus, Quest for the”), but a stroll through the annals of Christian History shows us that whenever these episodes arise, the most interesting thing to watch is how people wind up defining the person and work of Jesus. Invariably, the temptation when deciding who among us is the most like Christ is to stack the deck beforehand by defining Christ in ways that make Him most like me. In my opinion, this kind of activity is pretty egregious in this research by David Kinnaman. Let’s look at how Kinnaman defined Christlikeness.

First, Kinnaman defined a set of behaviors that would make a person like Christ:

1. “I listen to others to learn their story before telling them about my faith.” According to Kinnaman, if you reply to this in the affirmative, you’re acting like Jesus. My only problem is that I cannot think of a single instance in the New Testament where Jesus actually did this. Of course, I don’t have the New Testament memorized, and perhaps the first twenty comments will involve someone pointing me to lengthy listening-sessions conducted by Jesus in the gospels, but I can still meet my burden of proof. All I have to do is show that Jesus did not consistently do this, which means that all I have to show are a number of situations in which Jesus did not do this.

   • With the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus didn’t sit and listen to the woman while she told Him her story. He did tell her some things about her story, but most of them were somewhat confrontational.

   • With Nicodemus, Jesus didn’t listen to his story. Nicodemus barely got two sentences out before Jesus demanded that Nicodemus be born again and then insulted Nicodemus’s level of spiritual knowledge.

   • With the Rich Young Ruler, Jesus didn’t listen to his story. After a brief back-and-forth (which involved almost none of this young man’s “story”), Jesus unloaded a rather demanding requirement upon him.

   • In calling the apostles, Jesus didn’t listen to their stories…not once that I can find. He pretty abruptly called them to leave everything behind and follow Him.

   Now, I readily admit that there may be further interaction not recorded in the gospels that would show a less brusque Jesus to us, but it seems to me that one would benefit from a little actual hermeneutical data from the New Testament before branding the entirety of North American Christianity as unChristlike.

2. “In recent years, I have influenced multiple people to consider following Christ.” Bingo. No argument here. Jesus was very productive as a spiritual influencer.

3. “I regularly choose to have meals with people with very different faith or morals from me..” Ever read Matthew 15:21-28? Jesus was often pretty stand-offish toward those who were not Jewish. I can’t think of an occasion when Jesus actually shared a meal with someone who was not a Jew. Certainly we have no record that He would “regularly choose” to do so. Of course, every meal Jesus took on earth was a meal with people who held different morals from those of Jesus, so there’s some validity in that half of this point, but we have no record whatsoever of Jesus’ having a meal with somebody who worshipped Zeus.

   Now, understand me: I (probably like Kinnaman) think it is a good idea for Christian believers to choose regularly to share meals with people outside the faith. I’m willing to join with Kinnaman in pointing out to believers why that might be such a good idea. I’m just not willing to make stuff up about Jesus in order to make my argument more compelling.

4. “I try to discover the needs of non-Christians rather than waiting for them to come to me.” Jesus, being omniscient, knew everyone’s needs ahead of time. And yet, we have only a few instances in the New Testament of Jesus’ deviating from His schedule to seek out an individual. Zaccheus is a prominent example. The woman at the well is another. In most other cases, Jesus was content to wait for people to come to Him. He did, it is true, convene large meetings within a reasonable distance of the people who needed His message, that’s true. But so, also, do most evangelical Christians in the USA. Most of Jesus’ interactions with people in the New Testament were occasions when people came to Jesus and not vice-versa.

   That worked pretty well for Jesus, since He had omniscience and omnipotence in His corner. Our connection with those attributes is a bit different than His, and our calling and mission can be differentiated from His, too. It’s probably a good idea for us to go out looking hard for people and to pursue individuals for the gospel. Doing so is more a matter of making us Christ-obedient rather than Christlike.

5. “I am personally spending time with non-believers to help them follow Jesus.” Is there an unbeliever in the New Testament in whom Jesus invested more than a single hour (presuming that they did not become a believer during that hour)? If so, I don’t know who they were.

The post then moves from actions to attitudes, highlighting five of those that the research model correlates with Christlikeness:

These, like the “Actions Like Jesus,” are a mixed bag. It might be fun to see a statistical analysis of the Sermon on the Mount to learn how many sentences could reasonably be construed as communicating to people that they are sinners versus how many could reasonably be construed as communicating to people that “God is for them.” There’s a lot of strength in the last attribute in the list, and Jesus’ statements about the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air could make strong evidence for the first statement. As for the Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus seemed to say a lot more about how He saw Satan working in their lives than God. Most of these statements are attitudes that were evident in Jesus’ actions and statements at least a lot of the time with regard to a lot of people, but at some points, extrapolating them to universals seems to do some violence to the New Testament record of Jesus’ life and ministry.

Things really get fun when we look at Kinnaman’s measures of Pharisaicalism.

1. “I tell others the most important thing in my life is following God’s rules.” This is presented to us as an indicator of living like a Pharisee. Presumably, the assumption is that the Pharisees did this, Jesus did not do this, and that this difference between the two comprises some portion of the complaint that Jesus had against the Pharisees. But would Jesus pass Kinnaman’s test? The Jesus who told people in His most prominent sermon, “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven”? The Jesus who at multiple times and in multiple places characterized His life’s priority precisely as one of following the Father’s rules (“I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him”)?

   Was Jesus Pharasaical? Or is this just a really inaccurate instrument for measuring Pharasaicalism?

2. “I don’t talk about my sins or struggles. That’s between me and God.” OK, just direct me to a single forum in which Jesus talked about His own sins or struggles.

   Again, it is probably good for US to “confess [our] sins one to another,” but for precisely the opposite reason that Kinnaman is giving—not in order to be like Jesus, but because often we really aren’t like Him much at all.

3. “I try to avoid spending time with people who are openly gay or lesbian.” I’m willing at some point to engage in informed speculation about how Jesus would have interacted with people who were openly gay and lesbian if any had showed up in Nazareth one Tuesday night, but I’m also happy to acknowledge that there would have to be some level of speculation involved. We have no reason to believe that Jesus ever spent any time with anyone who was openly gay or lesbian. That’s not a political statement or a cultural statement; it’s a factual statement from the data of the New Testament.

   In saying so, perhaps I’m being a bit too harsh on this one. Jesus did interact with prostitutes, so there’s a stronger foundation for this speculation than for a whole lot of what’s going on in this article. But, that fact notwithstanding, Kinnaman is again using his extrabiblical speculations about Jesus as the standard by which he is branding other people as Pharisaical.

4. “I like to point out those who do not have the right theology or doctrine.” We know that the Pharisees tried to critique Jesus’ behavior on multiple occasions. We know that they brought difficult, tricky questions to Jesus to try to trap Him into saying something controversial to drive down His popularity. How many occasions can you think of in the gospels in which a Pharisee tried to correct someone else’s theology or doctrine? They probably did it. They probably did it a lot. But that is not a prominent feature of the Pharisee stories in the gospels.

   Instead, what we find in the gospels over and over again is Jesus repeatedly pointing out that the Pharisees did not have the right theology or doctrine: “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Jesus, as we know His relationship with the Pharisees from the gospels, is far more “guilty” of this behavior than were the Pharisees.

5. “I prefer to serve people who attend my church rather than those outside the church.” Jesus served people outside His inner circle. He healed the sick and raised the dead. He did amazing things. But His most profound acts of service—those in which He humbled Himself the most—were reserved for His disciples. He washed their feet, for example. I’d be uncomfortable saying that Jesus preferred to serve His inner circle, but I’d also be uncomfortable asserting categorically that He did not. His preferences in this regard are not a clear matter of record in the New Testament.

Well, generally when I’m getting tired of writing something I can rest assured that you’re getting tired of reading it, so let’s rush through the Pharisaical attitudes:

1. “I find it hard to be friends with people who seem to constantly do the wrong things.” Jesus had a lot of friends who USED to do the wrong things a lot. The story of His life was the way that people’s behavior tended to be transformed by His holiness, love, and grace. Can you think of a long-term friend of Jesus’ in the gospels who was a persistent, ongoing rebel against God?

2. “It’s not my responsibility to help people who won’t help themselves.” Great observation. Jesus found people who were helpless and consistently helped them.

3. “I feel grateful to be a Christian when I see other people’s failures and flaws.” Again, a good point. Jesus was never dismissive nor triumphal toward other people’s failures and flaws. The sins of people made Jesus sad, sometimes angry, often compassionate, never dismissive nor triumphal.

4. “I believe we should stand against those who are opposed to Christian values.”This seems profoundly self-contradictory to me. Here we have an article designed to teach what Christ’s values were and to take a stand against those who are opposed to them (by branding them as people who are living more like the Pharisees lived than like Christ lived). One of the survey’s standards used to identify those who are opposed to Christ’s values (in order to take a stand against them) is to find those people who like to take a stand against those who are opposed to Christian values. Confused? So am I.

   All in all, I’d say that Jesus pretty consistently stood against those who were opposed to His values.

5. “People who follow God’s rules are better than those who do not.” I think that Jesus would entirely, 100% agree with this statement. In fact, He came pretty close to saying so on more than one occasion. It’s just that when Jesus did so, He was speaking of an empty category (“People who follow God’s rules”). Nobody follows God’s rules. If there were a person who followed God’s rules, that person would be better than all of the rest of us who do not.Now, if we want to ask instead if people THINK that they are following God’s rules a whole lot better than the other people out there, then that would tell us a lot about how much someone resembles the Pharisees. This survey instrument? Not so much.

WWJD is a worthwhile mnemonic tool to encourage us to “let this mind be in [us] which was also in Christ Jesus.” And yet so often, when people drill down to specifics, we wind up learning more about those individual people than we actually learn about what Jesus would do. Why is it that we feel such certainty about what Jesus would do when in measure after measure we demonstrate such an appalling lack of familiarity with what Jesus actually DID do and say? At some point don’t we run the risk of taking the name of Jesus in vain? Have we no fear that Jesus might take offense at our audacity in redefining Him on a whim (if the antinomianism that so often passes for modern evangelicalism is capable of fearing God)? Can Christlikeness and Pharisaicalism be so blithely defined without a single cogent reference to the gospels? Can this kind of statistical research be undertaken and distributed abroad without any attempt at laying a foundation of hermeneutical research?

Indeed—mustn’t we ask—would Jesus, who so carefully and repeatedly quoted and cited the Old Testament to undergird His teachings, publish anything remotely resembling this?

I run the risk of letting this post be nothing more than a screed against a poorly designed survey instrument when my real goal is something much deeper and much more broadly applicable. I want to call us all, myself included, to be careful when we talk about Jesus. So many grandiose theories of Jesus founder on the rocks of some bewildering passage in the gospels. Being careful about the generalizations I make about Jesus simply amounts to respecting Jesus and recognizing, between Jesus and myself, which one of us it is who fully comprehends the other. We should resist the temptation to intuit Jesus, always doing instead the hard work of exegesis when it comes to speaking about our Savior. And certainly we should avoid the temptation to undergird a weak argument by resort to our Jesus-intuition when it might be more honest simply to admit that we are writing about our own personal preferences.