Pet Peeves

Like many Christians, I have a desire to share my faith with others who do not believe as I do. I desire to do this because I firmly believe that God has revealed to me the wonderful purpose for life, which is knowing and living for Jesus, and I want as many as possible to experience the same revelation. I also firmly believe that, at the root of things,  knowing Him is the ultimate answer to all of life's problems. 

There are, however, several obstacles that work together to prevent Christians, myself included, from fulfilling this desire. One is the potential for rejection that exists for the outspoken Christian. This rejection is something the Bible tells us will occur. It is something that many of us, before we were Christians, engaged in ourselves when we encountered outspoken Christians. We may remember how we felt when a Christian told us about his or her "relationship with Jesus". We may remember how we used to see such people as weak, stupid, goofy, or just plain crazy. We may remember how uncomfortable they used to make us and how we just wished they would go away and we don't want to be that person in the lives of others. 

We also probably know that, at the core, people aren't just rejecting us, but are rejecting Jesus as well. Even though I believe this is true, I also tend to have a sneaking suspicion that at least a small part of what people are "turned off" by may be our approach. I've heard evidence for this in what people sometimes say. They'll mention how Christians on the radio sound, or how they always seem to be asking for money. Or they might remember some "weird" church service they went to where nothing was relatable to them. Perhaps it was highly liturgical, or maybe an emotional, Pentecostal style, service. At any rate, they didn't feel that they could relate to what they saw as the typical Christian's approach to Christianity and this, purportedly, caused them to feel repelled by the Christian message. I say "purportedly" because it's difficult, if not impossible, for us (and maybe even them) to really know what's behind their antipathy. God knows, though, and has revealed to us that Jesus, and the story of the cross are, ultimately, the stumbling block.

My own pre-conversion experience was a mix of some of these things. As a result, I often find myself looking at Christian behaviors through the lens of my former perspective. Perhaps I go a little overboard in my concerns, but it's important to me that unbelievers do not become hindered by any unnecessarily unrelatable practices, behaviors, or even beliefs of Christians. For that reason, I also think it's important for Christians to be at the task of analyzing their practices and maybe even weeding out the ones that the contemporary culture might find to be unrelatable and/or archaic.

At this point, it's extremely important to be clear about the distinction between behaviors, practices, or beliefs that are necessary, useful, or otherwise desirable, and those that aren't. It's also important to be clear that I am not advocating that the Church try to look as much like the contemporary culture as possible. It's quite possible that the contemporary culture may consider many Christian behaviors, practices, or beliefs (and messages) to be archaic and unrelatable, while Christians have good biblical reasons to consider them biblically legitimate. In such cases, God's desires trump man's. Contemporary culture is not the final judge and should not be our guide. God is our guide, through His Word and by His Spirit. The Word clearly states that the children of God are those who are led by His Spirit (Romans 8). The Word also clearly tells us not to be conformed to the way this world thinks, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). Nonetheless, there are plenty of "non-negotiables" that are sure to offend contemporary culture without adding to the offense the things that we prefer simply because "that's the way we've always done it", or "that's the way I like it. If the culture doesn't like it, oh well." 

The Apostle Paul stated, "I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some." (1 Corinthians 9:19). I suspect that when Jesus spoke to His contemporaries, He spoke in the language of their day, not an archaic language that was in use 400 years earlier (analogous to our using "King James English"). In 1 Corinthians chapter 14:23, Paul makes a point to the Corinthians about the use of the gift of tongues when the church assembled. His point was that if everyone were to speak in tongues while an unbeliever entered, he would likely think they were crazy (and make a beeline for the door?). The bottom line to Paul was that all things were to be done for the purpose of building up and furthering the Gospel. In Romans chapter 15:2 he says "Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification." 1 Corinthians 13:5 tells us that "love does not seek it's own". Therefore, it's important to consider our ways and evaluate them with these attitudes in mind. We should ask ourselves, "What is our purpose in doing this or that? Does our purpose line up with God's?" And then, "Are we accomplishing that purpose with this behavior or practice?"

I have lots of "pet peeves" with regard to the points I've been making, one minor example, alluded to above, is when we pray or speak using King James English. Even being more nit-picking, rather than use the language, even from our more contemporary Bibles when speaking to unbelievers, I think we should try to use words that our culture uses. That definitely takes more work, but with practice, it can be done. I'm talking about those times when we are explaining things like Jesus being the "propitiation" for our sins. Is there a way we can explain it without using the word "propitiation"? It takes a lot of words to explain the one word, but we don't lose the listener just because we're using words he's never heard before. Obviously, if we're reading directly from the Bible, we're going to read the word as written. Then it's also obviously important to explain the concept. There are other times, though, that I don't think it even occurs to us to use different words, and we don't explain what we mean when we use the Bible word. Enough about that.

One fact that shouldn't be missed, and that should temper any feelings of concern I have for these issues...God is sovereign over all. He deigns to use us weak, fragile, even bumbling creatures to fulfill His great purpose. In fact, that is one of His purposes, to show Himself, i.e. to glorify Himself through "earthen vessels" (2 Corinthians 4:7). The fact that He has so chosen means that our delivery will necessarily be flawed. He, nevertheless, overcomes those flaws unhindered. Does that mean that we should just giddily do whatever we want without concern for the cultural sensibilities of the listener? I don't think so. I think we should do our best to be sensitive to those things by first listening to the Lord's direction, seeking His wisdom. We should also still examine our approach, but without getting all het up about it.