I tried Christianity but failed when the church bouncer told me to check my intelligence in at the door. Christians are stupid – ignorant, dumb, money-grubbing gay-bashing idiot bigots.

That usher was wrong, and if that is what you met, the anger is earned. But the man at the door is not the argument, and it is worth separating the two.

1. That welcome was a failure, not a doctrine. Nobody can defend telling a visitor to check his brain at the door, and no Christian who thinks about it will try. Jesus said to love God with all your mind (Matthew 22:37). The man disobeyed his own Master in the doorway, and the New Testament has a word for that: sin.

2. Behavior does not settle truth. Even if every Christian were a fool, that would show something about Christians, not about the claims. Jesus himself warned that many who say “Lord, Lord” will be turned away because he never knew them (Matthew 7:21-23). A movement that predicts frauds in its own ranks is not refuted by finding one.

3. Anti-intellectualism is a real sin in the church. No dodging this one. Paul says to take every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), and Peter commands a reasoned defense given “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). Large parts of American evangelicalism have been intellectually lazy, and critics inside the church have been saying so for decades — Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is not a book by an enemy.

4. The tradition is the opposite of stupid. Universities, hospitals, and much of the early scientific enterprise grew in Christian soil. Augustine, Aquinas, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, and Francis Collins today are not anomalies; they are the pattern. You cannot judge a two-thousand-year intellectual tradition by one congregation's doorman.

5. On money, the Bible agrees with you. “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10), and Jesus drove the profiteers out of the temple with a whip (John 2:15-16). Where preachers have monetized the faith, they are condemned by the book they claim to teach. That is not a defense of them; it is an indictment from their own side.

6. Disagreement is not hatred. Jesus summarized the law as love of God and love of neighbor (Matthew 22:39). Holding that an action is morally wrong while loving the person who does it is not only possible, it is commanded. If every moral disagreement counts as bigotry, no moral argument is possible — including the objection's own.

7. The charge proves far too much. If unkind or foolish adherents discredited a worldview, no worldview would survive. The twentieth century's worst mass murderers were atheists, and nobody concludes that atheism is therefore murderous. You do not reason from abuse to falsehood in politics, science, or philosophy. It is not a good argument here either.

8. The insult is doing the bouncer's job. Writing off Christians as idiots is the mirror image of being written off at the door. Both moves skip the argument. The only way out of that symmetry is to actually examine the claims — which is what the usher should have invited you to do.

9. Judge it by the standard its founder set. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). That is a fair standard, and it exposes Christians constantly. The New Testament is largely a record of its own leaders failing it and being corrected.

10. Scripture is honest about its heroes. Peter boasted and then denied Jesus three times (Matthew 26:75). Paul opposed him to his face in public (Galatians 2:11). A book that preserves its leaders' worst moments is not selling a fantasy; it is diagnosing a problem it claims to cure.

You met something real and wrong, and you are entitled to say so. But the usher is not the argument. The claims are still on the table, and they were made by someone who told his followers to love God with their minds.

Sources: C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; J.P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind; Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

Related challenges:
• What does it mean to be a Christian? There are over 30,000 different groups, all of which answer this question differently. If agreement cannot be found on THIS issue, can the claims of Christians themselves be taken with any degree of seriousness?
• ALL sins are forgiven if you ‘accept Jesus as your savior’, right? What about the non-forgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit? We have a little CONTRADICTION problem here?!
• Why do arrogant Christians think they’re right about everything?