eavesdropping
While standing in line to get my waffles today...mmm waffles...hot and fragrant and soft with blueberry jam smeared all...errr...wait..where was I. Oh yes. While standing in line to get my..err..food.. I couldn't help but overhear the guy and girl in front of me chatting away. At first the talk was mindless enough, but then they started up on the topic of Christians and their attitudes towards them. Both were unbelievers and both started complaining about their experiences with Christians who tried to speak to them about God or bring them to church or what not, with the guy saying that he was eagerly anticipating the next evangelistic discourse just so he could proclaim his allegiance to Satan and watch the Christian recoil in horror. The girl then piped up saying that she could barely handle 50 years of life already so what would she want an eternity of it for.
I'm not going to try and justify the acts of whatever Christians they might have met along the way, or those of any other Christians who have, in their desire to spread the Gospel, offended people along the way. What I am trying to say is that in the course of fulfilling the commission that Jesus laid down for us just before He left, the commission to go out and tell the world about His love, we have to realise that we must always consider the sensibilities of the people to whom we are trying to reach out to. Jesus might have stood on a hill or in a boat and proclaimed the word but He did it because in the Middle-East 2000 years ago, people listened to you if you did that. We have to realise that deciding not to do certain things is not a refusal to do God's work, but rather a decision to do it in a better way. We have to realise that things like stuffing flyers in mailboxes, knocking door to door and incessantly pestering friends to go to church are, in fact, supremely irritating actions and only serve to alienate the non-believe even more. We have to realise that we subscribe to a belief that is ridiculed on a daily basis, second only to perhaps George W Bush, and thus we must do things in a way such that people will consider our faith as something worthy of respect and perhaps find it somewhere within to lend us their open ears.
The guy I was queing behind put it very aptly. When the girl mentioned that all Christians went about forcing their faith on people, the guy replied that not all did; that in fact he had met quite a few who did do it the right way, and he found himself respecting and appreciating them, even if he did not open his heart to their message. It was, however, the ones who obstinately went about their 'business' without a second thought to the sensibilities of the recipient who had him so riled.
I'm not going to try and justify the acts of whatever Christians they might have met along the way, or those of any other Christians who have, in their desire to spread the Gospel, offended people along the way. What I am trying to say is that in the course of fulfilling the commission that Jesus laid down for us just before He left, the commission to go out and tell the world about His love, we have to realise that we must always consider the sensibilities of the people to whom we are trying to reach out to. Jesus might have stood on a hill or in a boat and proclaimed the word but He did it because in the Middle-East 2000 years ago, people listened to you if you did that. We have to realise that deciding not to do certain things is not a refusal to do God's work, but rather a decision to do it in a better way. We have to realise that things like stuffing flyers in mailboxes, knocking door to door and incessantly pestering friends to go to church are, in fact, supremely irritating actions and only serve to alienate the non-believe even more. We have to realise that we subscribe to a belief that is ridiculed on a daily basis, second only to perhaps George W Bush, and thus we must do things in a way such that people will consider our faith as something worthy of respect and perhaps find it somewhere within to lend us their open ears.
The guy I was queing behind put it very aptly. When the girl mentioned that all Christians went about forcing their faith on people, the guy replied that not all did; that in fact he had met quite a few who did do it the right way, and he found himself respecting and appreciating them, even if he did not open his heart to their message. It was, however, the ones who obstinately went about their 'business' without a second thought to the sensibilities of the recipient who had him so riled.
posted by isaac! at 12:19 AM
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