I write this at Christmastime, when the air itself seems thick with religious language. The word Christ is everywhere—on storefronts, playlists, political speeches, charity campaigns, and social media posts—yet I cannot escape the feeling that the figure whose birth we celebrate has never been more absent. Christmas has become a season of Christian noise and Christian branding, but rarely of Christian danger. And if there is one thing that early Christianity unquestionably was, it was dangerous.
This essay is not written from outside Christianity, nor from a posture of smug secular superiority. I write as someone who cannot shake Jesus of Nazareth, who still finds the Gospels unsettling, luminous, and infuriating in equal measure. I write as someone who suspects that if Jesus were to walk into most modern Christian spaces—especially during Christmas—He would be politely ignored at best, and quietly escorted out at worst.
The hypocrisy of modern Christianity is not merely a matter of individual moral failure. It is structural. It is theological. It is cultural. And it becomes especially visible at Christmas, when the story of a homeless infant born to an occupied people is repackaged as a sentimental endorsement of comfort, consumption, and power.
What follows is a philosophical Christmas meditation on the widening gulf between early Christianity and its modern descendants—and on what that gulf reveals about us.
The Scandal of the Manger
The Christmas story is not cute. We have made it cute. We have domesticated it, softened its edges, wrapped it in children’s pageants and LED-lit lawn decorations. But the original narrative is a scandal.
A poor Jewish girl becomes pregnant under suspicious circumstances. An imperial census forces her and her partner to travel while she is on the verge of giving birth. There is no room for them—no room—and the child is born among animals, placed in a feeding trough. The first witnesses are not priests or kings but shepherds, a group widely regarded in the ancient world as unreliable, unclean, and socially marginal.
This is not accidental symbolism. From the beginning, Christianity announces itself as a reversal of the world’s values. As Mary herself proclaims in what we call the Magnificat:
“He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:52–53)
That is not a metaphor. It is a threat.
Early Christianity understood this. The manger was not a sentimental backdrop; it was a manifesto. God, the Christians claimed, had sided decisively with the powerless, the disposable, the poor. Not symbolically. Not rhetorically. Actually.
Modern Christianity, by contrast, often treats the manger as a branding asset. It celebrates the aesthetics of humility while aggressively avoiding its implications.
Early Christianity: A Way of Life, Not an Identity
One of the most profound differences between early Christianity and its modern forms is this: early Christianity was not an identity; it was a way of life so strange that it defied existing categories.
The earliest Christians did not call themselves “Christians” in the way we do now. That label was initially applied from the outside, and possibly as an insult. What mattered was not belief as abstract assent but participation in a radically different social order.
The Book of Acts describes this community in terms that modern Christians often quote and then immediately neutralize:
“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” (Acts 2:44–45)
This was not charity. It was not tithing. It was not generosity from excess. It was economic reorganization.
The early Christian refusal to accumulate wealth, to participate in imperial cults, or to mirror Roman hierarchies made them deeply suspicious. They were accused of atheism (for refusing the Roman gods), cannibalism (a grotesque misunderstanding of the Eucharist), and political subversion.
And in a sense, those accusations were correct. Christianity was subversive. It announced a kingdom that directly challenged the legitimacy of empire, class, and domination.
Modern Christianity, particularly in the West, has inverted this relationship. Rather than standing as a critique of power, it often functions as power’s chaplain.
Constantine’s Ghost at Christmas Dinner
No honest discussion of Christian hypocrisy can avoid Constantine.
When Christianity moved from persecuted minority to imperial religion in the fourth century, something fundamental changed. The faith that once proclaimed “Jesus is Lord” as a direct challenge to Caesar became compatible with Caesar’s throne.
Theologian John Howard Yoder famously argued that Constantine’s conversion represented not Christianity’s triumph but its temptation. The cross was slowly replaced by the sword, the Sermon on the Mount by administrative convenience.
At Christmas, this transformation becomes grotesquely clear. The child born under imperial occupation is celebrated by churches that often drape themselves in national flags, bless military ventures, and equate Christian faith with loyalty to the state.
Jesus, who said:
“You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” (Matthew 6:24)
is routinely enlisted to justify economic systems built on endless accumulation and disposable human lives.
The early Christians would not recognize this arrangement. They understood wealth not as a sign of divine favor but as a spiritual danger. As the Epistle of James warns:
“Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith?” (James 2:5)
Modern Christianity, by contrast, has often baptized wealth, power, and respectability—especially at Christmas, when extravagance is framed as celebration rather than excess.
The Sermon on the Mount and the Art of Ignoring Jesus
If I were asked to name the clearest evidence of Christian hypocrisy, I would not point to scandals or political entanglements. I would point to the widespread neglect of Jesus’ own ethical teachings.
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) is not obscure. It is not ambiguous. It is not difficult to understand. It is difficult to accept.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
“Love your enemies.”
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.”
“Do not resist an evildoer.”
“Judge not.”
Early Christians took these words seriously enough to alarm the Roman state. Modern Christians have become experts at explaining why Jesus didn’t really mean what He said.
Leo Tolstoy, whose own conversion was sparked by the Sermon on the Mount, wrote:
“Christianity in its true sense puts an end to violence, to war, to all compulsion; but Christianity as a church supports everything that Christianity in its true sense condemns.”
At Christmas, this dissonance is almost unbearable. We celebrate the Prince of Peace while excusing systems of violence that Jesus explicitly rejected. We sing about goodwill toward all while carefully defining which groups do not qualify.
The Poor as Props
One of the most disturbing features of modern Christmas Christianity is how the poor function symbolically rather than relationally.
In the Gospels, the poor are not a seasonal project. They are the central test of faithfulness. Jesus is blunt about this:
“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)
Early Christians did not outsource care for the poor to occasional charity drives. Their communal life was structured around mutual dependence. To be poor was not to be a problem to be solved but a person to be embraced.
Modern Christianity often prefers manageable compassion—acts of generosity that do not threaten comfort, property, or hierarchy. The poor appear at Christmas as marketing imagery, sermon illustrations, or recipients of surplus goods, but rarely as equals whose presence might disrupt our way of life.
The manger becomes a symbol we admire rather than a location we inhabit.
“I Like Your Christ, I Do Not Like Your Christians”
The quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi is so frequently repeated that it risks becoming cliché:
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Its persistence, however, suggests that it continues to name something real.
The hypocrisy Gandhi identified is not merely moral inconsistency. It is a profound betrayal of the shape of Jesus’ life. Jesus did not accumulate followers by offering them comfort or validation. He offered them a cross.
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
Early Christianity understood discipleship as a costly reorientation of desire. Modern Christianity often presents it as an accessory—something that enhances an already comfortable life.
At Christmas, the contrast is stark. The cross-shaped life is temporarily replaced with a manger-shaped aesthetic that requires nothing of us.
Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and the Fear of Freedom
No critique of Christian hypocrisy feels complete without Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, a parable embedded within The Brothers Karamazov.
In the story, Jesus returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition and is immediately arrested by church authorities. The Grand Inquisitor explains that Jesus’ gift of freedom was a mistake—that people prefer security, certainty, and authority to the burden of love.
The tragedy is that the Inquisitor is not a caricature. He represents a recurring temptation: to replace the dangerous freedom Jesus offers with a manageable religion that supports order and power.
Christmas Christianity often participates in this substitution. It offers comfort without conversion, belonging without transformation, celebration without repentance.
The infant Jesus is safe. The adult Jesus is not.
Early Christians and the Absurdity of Love
One of the most overlooked features of early Christianity is how irrational it appeared.
Christians cared for plague victims abandoned by their families. They rescued exposed infants left to die. They treated slaves as siblings. They forgave enemies. They refused to retaliate.
The second-century theologian Tertullian reported pagans exclaiming:
“See how they love one another.”
That love was not sentimental. It was costly, inconvenient, and often fatal.
Modern Christianity, particularly at Christmas, excels at sentiment. Love is reduced to feeling rather than practice, to mood rather than commitment. We speak endlessly about love while structuring our lives to avoid its demands.
The Hypocrisy We Inherit
It would be comforting to locate Christian hypocrisy entirely in institutions or leaders. But the truth is more uncomfortable. We inherit it. We participate in it.
I write this as someone who enjoys warmth, stability, and abundance while celebrating the birth of a homeless child. I sing carols about surrender while guarding my comforts with religious intensity.
The hypocrisy of modern Christianity is not simply out there. It is in me.
And yet, Christmas insists on hope. Not the cheap optimism of denial, but the stubborn hope that truth can still wound us into honesty.
What Would It Mean to Take Christmas Seriously?
To take Christmas seriously would mean allowing the incarnation to destabilize us.
It would mean rethinking our relationship to wealth, power, nation, and enemy. It would mean reading the Gospels not as inspirational literature but as a dangerous invitation.
Early Christianity did not ask, “What do I believe?” It asked, “Whose life am I living?”
The question remains.
A Final Christmas Confession
I do not write this because I believe Christianity is doomed. I write because I believe it is still haunted by the figure it claims to worship.
The child in the manger grows up. He speaks inconvenient truths. He refuses to flatter power. He is executed by the state with religious approval.
And Christians, then as now, must decide whether they will follow Him—or merely celebrate His birth.
At Christmas, the hypocrisy of modern Christianity is exposed not to condemn us, but to call us back.
Back to the manger. Back to the poor. Back to the dangerous love that once turned the world upside down.
That, at least, is the Christianity worth remembering at Christmas.