When the Name Christian Loses the Way of Jesus
A reflection on compassion, human dignity, and what it really means to follow Jesus.
Why I’m Writing This…
I’ve never believed the pulpit is the place to promote political parties or tell people how to vote. That hasn’t changed. The gospel doesn’t fit inside our political categories, and Jesus was never interested in being claimed by one side or another.
My calling has always been to point people to Christ and to help form disciples whose lives reflect His character. What concerns me right now isn’t politics. It’s posture.
We are watching human beings, real people created in the image of God, talked about, dismissed, and even celebrated in death when it suits a narrative. We have grown comfortable reducing lives to arguments and pain to proof points. That should trouble anyone who claims to follow Jesus.
Scripture is clear that every person bears God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27). When we lose sight of that, we don’t just lose compassion, we lose our witness.
This is not about left or right. It’s about what happens when allegiance to ideas outruns allegiance to people. It’s about what happens when outrage replaces mourning and when winning replaces loving.
As Christians, we do not get to pick which lives deserve dignity. We do not get to excuse indifference because an issue feels complicated. And we certainly do not get to use the name of Jesus while abandoning the way of Jesus.
That’s why I’m writing this.
Not to argue politics, but to call the Church back to seeing people as people. Image-bearers. Neighbors. Human beings worthy of compassion, even when it costs us something.
The name Christian is being used for things Jesus would never recognize. That sentence should unsettle us.
Somewhere along the way, following Christ became tangled with defending positions, winning arguments, and protecting tribes. James 3:9 says it this way, “With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God’s likeness.” In the process, we have even roped Jesus into our political parties, as if the Son of God exists to endorse platforms rather than to redeem people.
The result is that human beings, people created in the image of God, are reduced to talking points. Compassion becomes conditional. Sympathy gets filtered through agreement. This isn’t about politics. This is about people.
Scripture does not give us room to maneuver here. “So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27).
There are no qualifiers attached to that truth. The image of God is not something we grant. It is something we are called to recognize and honor. Every human life carries divine weight, even when it complicates our views or challenges our comfort.
Jesus made this unmistakably clear through a story we’ve grown far too familiar with, the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37).
When Jesus told that story, Samaritan was not a neutral word. Jews and Samaritans carried generations of hostility. They disagreed over worship, history, and identity. Samaritans were viewed as compromised and impure. Many Jews would avoid them entirely. If Jesus wanted a character everyone agreed with, this was the worst possible choice. And that was the point.
In the story, a man is beaten and left for dead. Two religious leaders see him. They know the law. They understand what faith requires. And they keep walking.
Then Jesus says something that would have landed like a punch to the chest. “But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him; and when he saw the man, he had compassion” (Luke 10:33).
That word compassion matters more than we usually let it. In the language Jesus used, compassion is not passive. It is not sentiment. It is not feeling bad from a safe distance. It is a word rooted in the gut, a deep internal stirring that demands a response. Biblical compassion is being moved so deeply by another person’s suffering that you are compelled to act. Compassion is not something you manage.
It is something that interrupts you.
The Samaritan stops. He gets close. He risks contamination. He spends his own money. He alters his plans. Compassion costs him time, safety, convenience, and comfort. That’s why Jesus chose that word. Because compassion, in the way Jesus teaches it, always leads somewhere. It leads to action.
Jesus made the enemy the example. Not because the Samaritan was morally superior, but because compassion broke through boundaries everyone else obeyed. The religious leaders saw the wounded man. Seeing wasn’t the problem. The problem was that compassion never disrupted their path.
Jesus consistently chose people over posturing.
He touched the untouchable (Mark 1:40–42).
He defended the vulnerable (John 8:3–11).
He wept with the grieving (John 11:32–35).
He confronted injustice without losing mercy (Matthew 21:12–13).
Then He said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).
Not by our certainty.
Not by our arguments.
Not by how quickly we pick a side.
Love.
And that’s where the Church has to pause and take an honest look at itself. When the name of Jesus is used to excuse cruelty, dismiss suffering, or justify harm, something has gone deeply wrong. Jesus is not a mascot for anger. He is not a tool for fear. He is not a banner for dehumanization.
The Church has to do better. We cannot claim allegiance to Christ while overlooking human pain. We cannot preach grace while practicing indifference. We cannot follow a crucified Savior and remain unmoved by suffering that complicates our worldview.
James reminds us to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger” (James 1:19). Micah tells us plainly what faithfulness looks like: “To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
Justice.
Mercy.
Humility.
Not silence. Not selective compassion.
Being in Christ means our allegiance is settled. It means we see people before positions and image-bearers before issues. It means we call out, without hesitation, anything that wears the name of Jesus while rejecting the way of Jesus.
This is not about choosing sides. This is about choosing the way of Jesus.And faithfulness will always look like love that stops, sees, and refuses to walk past human pain, even when it costs us something.
As St. Francis prayed centuries ago, may we become people who bring love where there is hatred, hope where there is despair, and light where there is darkness.