I would guess that they would say it’s mostly because of things Christians do, not that they really have a problem with Jesus Christ himself. When asked by an American reporter why he wasn’t a Christian, Ghandi reportedly (and erroneously*) said, “I like your Christ. Your Christians? Not so much.” Whether he said it or not, the point is well made. Well, sort of. A great many deplorable–dare I say, “un-Christian”?–things have been done “in the name of Christ.” It is a terrible argument (red herring? Straw man? Non sequitur?), though. One is not a Christian because of Christians, but because of Jesus Christ, and one must surely ask, if only for the sake of mere intellectual honesty, if those objectionable things that are done in Jesus’ name are actually encouraged by him. If Jesus said that if I am slapped on the right cheek, I am to turn the left one to be struck also, but instead I shoot the one who slapped me, I am not much of a Christ-follower, am I? And if I am not even to return evil with evil, how can I possibly justify instigating it!
I am convinced, however, that the same people who claim not to be Christians because of the Inquisition, the Crusades, or other awful things “Christians” have done do so because it is an easy, if intellectually challenged, excuse. Fact is, Jesus places impossible demands on his followers, demands that can only be realized by complete and total surrender to his will, and even then, we still occasionally screw things up. And humans are loath to give up control to anyone, much less a moralist like Jesus Christ. Like with the rich young ruler, he tends to require us to give up our gods before we can follow him, and we do love our little gods, don’t we? Sex, money, power, fame…ourselves, our lives. Just try a little experiment: Ask your garden variety atheist if he/she would be a Christian if everything in the Bible, including the resurrection, were proven to be absolutely true. I will bet good money that the answer will be, in virtually every instance, “No.” Why? It’s not Christians, it’s Jesus.
Really.
* “A similar quote appears to be from an Indian philosopher named Bara Dada, brother of Rabindranath Tagore. The full quote from Dada appears to be from the mid-1920s: ‘Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians, you are not like him.’” (7 Gandhi Quotes That Are Totally Fake)
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