To say that Christians as a whole have left behind the teachings of Christ is truly a red herring. Are there many people in the United States that will claim the name of Jesus Christ, and yet do not follow him? Yes. Absolutely, and unequivocally there are many that are “cultural Christians”. To say that Christians have left Christ behind in that context is to completely ignore what is truly a world religion and attempt to confine it to a nationalistic American religion.
The largest Christian church in the world is in South Korea. This is but one small evidence of the fact that Christianity is no longer an American, or even a Western religion—the center of Christianity has moved to the South. World Christianity is on the rise, and the reality is in many of the places where Christianity is most quickly growing there is no such thing as a “cultural Christian,” because to become a Christian is to risk: social, political, economic, and even physical death.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his classic work “The Cost of Discipleship” says that “when Christ calls a man He bids him come and die”, and even a cursory look at world Christianity let us know that there are many that are still willing “come and die” for Christ. Just look at a ministry like Voice of the Martyrs that tells the stories, and reaches out to people around the world who are willing to paying the ultimate price to follow Christ.
As far as Christianity in the United States; it has its issues, but before we can say that Christians in the United States have as a whole have left behind the teachings of Christ first requires us to consider what that phrase means. What is it to be Christian? What does it mean to follow the teachings of Christ? Does one have to be Christian to follow his teachings? Can a person be Christian and not follow Christ’s teaching? We must consider all of these questions to answer the bigger question at hand.
The first recorded use of the term Christian is in Acts 11:26, while Barnabas and Saul were in Antioch, prior to this “Christians” were known as “followers of the Way”. The term Christian was at this point a sneer, a snide remark used to mock the followers of this small, but growing, Jewish sect and their crucified Christ. Christians were those that followed a person, the one they called Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One.
There was, and I would suggest is, something unique about these people that followed Christ. They followed a man whose teaching was not philosophical but was an outpouring of his life. He lived it, and he asked his disciples to live it. That was what defined Christians, not so much their belief, but their lives. They lived like their founder, and they held an absolute allegiance to him. To be truly Christian is to have one's life defined by a man that lived nearly 2,000 years ago, and if they are to be believed, lives today.
So have Christians abandoned the teachings of Christ? The answer is an unequivocal and resounding “NO!” because they cannot. For a person to abandon a life lived in reckless abandon to becoming like Christ is to abandon the term Christian, it is to become something entirely other. Are their non-Christians who have absconded with the title? Yes. There are. However, there truly can be no such thing as a Christian who has abandoned the teachings of Christ, for that is a self-defeating statement, one that cannot bear the weight of the paper upon which it is written.
To be Christian is to follow the teachings of Christ, and to follow the teachings of Christ is to follow with absolute allegiance the God-man—Christ Jesus. Therefore, if one follows the teaching of Christ then they are Christian in the truest sense of the word. Those that attempt to find a an admirable philosophy for life in the teachings of Christ may do so, but are not Christian, in the end result they are but followers of self that pick and choose things they like in any philosophy that may suit them at the moment—but not Christian.