April 28, 2005
How We Look
I think that, for the most part, here is how most Americans see Evangelical Christians:
Once I read a book, and this is what it said,
If your music has a beat, then your gonna wind up dead.
It doesn't really matter if its "Christian" or not,
if it's syncopated rhythm, then your soul is gonna rot.
And this book was called:
Ha! you're gonna burn!
and in the second chapter, I went on to learn:You take 2 houseplants and put ‘em to the test,
set them both in front of speakers and let the music do the rest.
The first one you play Mozart or something lovely like that,
the second one you play that Petra or that MegaDeth.
It doesn't really matter what kind of rock it is.
What we really need, of course, is for Americans to see us in the light of the last two stanzas:
So I took my two houseplants, and I put 'em both back outside, and me and my neighbor, well, we went out for a drive. We talked about all the things that really matter most, like life and love and happiness, and then the Holy Ghost.Now my two houseplants both sit out in the sun,
and as for my neighbor, well our friendship has become,
a meaningful relationship that’s headed straight to Heaven,
but as for now, we like to sit around and listen to Audio Adrenaline
cranked to eleven!
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm no feel good "Christianity's about your self-image and Jesus just loves you the way you are, so do the best you can" type of person (sorry, I just cannot bring myself to put dashes between all those words). I am fully aware that, in each case when faced with a sinner, Jesus, in addition to loving the person, also required the person to stop sinning. (See, e.g., John 5:14.)
Jesus commanded Christians to "Love one another." Do we do that? Do people notice how we treat other Christians with love? For that matter, do people realize that we love them too? Pretty much . . . I think not. Most people see us in the light of the first two verses to the AudioA song above.
It doesn't have to be that way. We can still reflect the love of Christ and the holiness of Christ as well. Perhaps if we focused on the love part as much as the stop sinning part, we'd come a bit closer to the mark.
One good starting point: Modern Christians, particularly Evangelicals, should re-discover the concept of humility. There's not a lot of humility in modern Christian Evangelicals today. No, not much at all. We pay lip service to that virtue, of course, much as we pay lip service to other Christian virtues (you know, like charity). But, frankly, most Evangelicals don't have a lot of time for humility these days. Too busy with other things.
Posted by Mark at 11:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack