When someone refers to your deeply personal and considered faith as 'bonkers religious stories', it's not unreasonable that you might take offence. So when former England international footballer Gary Lineker tweeted that phrase – rather provocatively on Easter Sunday itself – the reaction among many Christians was hardly surprising, and perhaps merited. Some social media users attempted to engage the now-TV presenter in debate, others told him off; still others suggested that his employers at the BBC should 'have a word with him'. Yet despite his slightly facetious tone, I think Lineker's Easter message offers an important challenge – or actually a series of them – that the Church would do well to properly engage with.
I should probably begin with a disclaimer. Gary Lineker is my all-time personal sporting hero. He so nearly fired England to World Cup glory at the 1990 World Cup as I was coming of age as a football fan, and ever since I've found him an intelligent and interesting commentator on both culture and sport. Yet perhaps it's because I'm predisposed to like him so much, that I'm prepared not to immediately become defensive. That never stopped Gary when he was playing after all; it's probably not the right approach now either.
Funny how we get brainwashed as children into believing these bonkers religious stories. Might be true though, I suppose.
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) April 16, 2017 " data-caption="null" data-credit="null">There's a lot going on in Lineker's tweet. He calls Christianity 'bonkers', and accuses the Church (given the timing, I think it's fairly safe to assume we were his target) – and perhaps also wider culture – of brainwashing. Yet then he changes course dramatically, and while his final phrase 'might be true though I suppose', could be considered sarcastic, I'm choosing to take it at face value. In which case, Lineker's three-pronged message is a mix of searingly honest opinion, and refreshing open-mindedness. And here's the thing: he's got a point on all three counts.
For a start, we do need to be honest about the Church's culture of indoctrination. We absolutely and unashamedly attempt to root children in faith way before their critical faculties truly kick in. That's arguably why we've seen such a shift in emphasis from youth to children's work in the past few years; it's way easier to indoctrinate someone than to disciple them. The Bible itself even seems to give us a mandate for this kind of behaviour: Proverbs 22:6 is an oft-quoted call to 'train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it', while Paul in Ephesians 6:4 tells fathers to bring children up 'in the discipline and instruction of the Lord'. A proper dissection of these verses would take another article entirety, so suffice to say: we do try to reproduce our own faith in our children, and in other people's children too. It's a fair critique.
Lineker's suspicion of this activity, particularly in a post-Christian culture, is understandable. And even more so because the Christian story is, as he says, a bit bonkers*. In a rational, scientific world, the Bible is a story of supernatural occurrences, miracles, weird visions and a final apocalypse. It includes, in no particular order, stores about a talking donkey, people surviving a deadly furnace, a man building a boat big enough to host every species on earth, and a group of teenagers being mauled by an angelically-inspired bear. Whether or not all that stuff is true and really happened is irrelevant – in the context of a world where nothing like that usually happens, 'bonkers' is a fine word to sum it all up.
*For non-British readers, this is a colloquialism meaning 'crazy.'
Those last six words are a fascinating contrast, however. We do indoctrinate kids. The stories are a bit crazy. And yet in spite of all that, the claims of the Christian faith might just be true. Of course, I believe that they are. For Gary Lineker and millions of others however, the assumption is that they're probably not. His mind isn't completely closed though; it's just that the story seems a bit... implausible.
Plausibility is one of the great challenges of sharing the Christian faith in 2017. The Guardian, usually regarded as the least Christian-friendly of all newspapers, ran a fascinating piece over the Easter weekend assessing the historical evidence that Jesus lived, which concluded that the 'abundant historical references leave us with little reasonable doubt that Jesus lived and died'. The more interesting question, author Simon Gathercole suggests, 'is whether Jesus died and lived'. It's this story, the centrepiece of the Easter festival which provoked Gary Lineker's tweet, which non-Christians find hardest to swallow. The resurrection of Jesus is an utterly bonkers story – and one we Christians are keen to share with everyone from an early age – yet despite its rational implausibility, if it's true it becomes the most important event in world history.
Disarming the issue of plausibility is not an easy or quick task. But becoming defensive about the Christian story, or about how we practise our faith, definitely doesn't help. Rather, we should embrace the quirky weirdness of the Bible, and be honest about our motivation to spread Jesus' message. Yes, Christianity is a bit bonkers, but there are many entirely sensible people who suppose that it might just all be true – and we humbly invite others, including Gary Lineker, to join us on the journey of finding out.
Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. Follow him on Twitter @martinsaunders.
