Christianity’s P.R. Problem–Part 2

“You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.”
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Some of us are blessed with great relationships with our extended families, others not so much.  But we keep going back to the cookouts, don’t we?  Because, well, they’re FAMILY!  It’s always a little easier to put aside differences when you’re tossing beanbags with brats on the grill.

But after the cookout, and the cleanup, and the kisses goodbye, the differences remain.  Every family has them.  However, the differences are thrown into sharp relief in a family where some of the members are Christians and some are not.

If you, like me, are among the first in your family to come out as an evangelical Christian, it can be uncomfortable at first.  Not only do you stick out like a sore thumb, but you see everyone else differently. You become woefully aware of the P.R. problem.

No matter what your family situation is or what kind of relationships you have with them, there is one thing you must never forget.  It wasn’t anything you did that made you different from them.

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9 RSV)

Now I do not want to assume that everyone reading this knows what is meant by “grace.”  Basically, it means “unmerited favor,” or getting something that you didn’t earn.

Say for example you’re speeding down the interstate, and you get pulled over.  You know you deserve a ticket.  Getting what you deserve is justice.

What you HOPE will happen instead is that the officer will let you off with a warning.  Not getting what you deserve is mercy.

But what if instead the officer comes up to your car window and says, “You and I both know you have broken the law.  But nobody’s perfect.  So instead of a ticket, I’m just going to give you this Hershey Bar.  Have a wonderful day!”

That’s not normal. Not for a regular person anyway, but Jesus wasn’t a regular person.

He didn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up and be “good enough” for Him before He called us to follow Him.  We’ll never be good enough.  That’s the whole point of grace—we can’t do it ourselves.

Meanwhile, back at the family reunion. . .

Look around the yard at all these people getting on your nerves–these people you feel you have nothing in common with anymore.

Now look at them again, Christian.  You DO have something in common with them—genetic material.  Before God, in His mercy and grace, saved you, you were just like them.  In more ways than you care to admit, you still are.

So, don’t become part of the P.R. problem. PRactice grace by loving your family for who they are, not who you think they ought to be.  Appreciate them for what they do, not for what they can do for you.  PRactice grace by looking past the rough edges to the heart inside—the heart that has a God-shaped hole in it just like yours once did.

But most of all, PRactice grace by simply hanging around with them.  Look past the differences and find the common ground.

After all, they’re family.  And you’re stuck with them.

PROVE IT!

If Christianity really does have a P.R. problem, the single greatest source of it may be the perception of hypocrisy.

It is not only possible but common for someone to have a set of ideals that they occasionally do not live up to.

On the other hand, an actual hypocrite is someone who deceptively and intentionally elevates their own outward image while inwardly or privately behaving in a completely different manner.

Unfortunately, throughout the centuries, many people within the church have created this P.R. problem by doing just that.  Even more unfortunately, we live in a culture that is equally self-seeking rather than Truth-seeking.

As a result, people who do not want to believe in God, instead of trying to learn more about Him and His followers, will instead seek out examples of why NOT to be a follower.  The most common excuse seems to be, “Christians are hypocrites, so why would I want to be one?”

Even so, our primary concern should not be to defend ourselves against the charges of hypocrisy by merely saying that we are not hypocrites.  Our job is to PRove it.

If anyone is to believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world and that we, the Church, are His ambassadors, then it is imperative that our walk matches our talk.

Jesus summed up our mission in this excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount:

Notice that the motivation for a Christian’s good deeds is so that people will praise God, not the doer of the deeds.  Another person could do the very same deeds, praising Jesus with his mouth the entire way, but with self-serving motivation.  The world will notice this and affix the label of “hypocrite” appropriately.

So here are a few PRactical ways to PRove to a skeptical world that your faith is genuine:

• Know your Bible.  If someone twists a Bible quote, you need to be able to call them on it in such a way as to correct the misinformation without condemning.
• Show an attitude of gratitude, rather than one of entitlement.  People perceive what you value most by how bent you get if you lose it.
• Persevere through trials; don’t be a whiner.  Anyone can complain, but complainers never see the view from the top of the mountain.
• Speak only what is beneficial for building people up and meeting the needs of all who listen (see Ephesians 4:29). Hint: the best way to find out what their needs are is to LISTEN before you speak.
• Invest time and energy into relationships and consider other people’s needs more important than your own.  People tend not to care what you know until they know that you care.
• NEVER COMPROMISE THE TRUTH!!!  Just as we do not serve the world by preaching at them from a judgmental stance, neither do we serve them by blending in.

The only difference between Christians and non-Christians is Christ, but that difference makes ALL the difference.

THE PRIZE

To sum up, the most effective solution to Christianity’s P.R. problem is for the individuals within the church to live lives of service.

We make it a PRiority to PRaise our God, PRotect our spouse’s hearts, PRovide for our children, PRactice grace with our extended families and PRove to the world that Jesus Christ is the Lord of our lives by visibly living out our faith.

But let’s face it, all that service can be tiring.  If we put too much emphasis on pouring ourselves out for others, it can be all too easy to neglect the refilling process.

Fortunately, we don’t need to look any farther than the Ten Commandments to find out how to solve this problem:

God gave us the Sabbath for a reason.  He knew we would need the rest.  To paraphrase Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you can’t sharpen your saw if you never stop sawing.

Now I don’t want to get into the legalistic argument of what constitutes “work.”  Keeping the Sabbath is not about following the letter of the law.  That’s religion, and that’s a whole other P.R. problem.  Jesus came to set us free from that.

The point is that we were created to love God, love one another, and serve the world.  We can only do that effectively if we take time to chill out and recharge.  With the concept of the Sabbath, God gave us a simple template to follow to make sure that we stayed refueled in order to carry out His ministry effectively.

Paul knew that he would need this refueling when he wrote:

If life were all about pressing on, with no time for resting, we would burn out.  Thus, we would not complete our mission and win the PRize.

Now, what is this PRize of which Paul speaks?  It can’t be the salvation of our souls.  As we already covered, we are saved by grace, God’s unmerited favor, and not through our own efforts.  In other words, we don’t earn our golden ticket to Heaven by “straining forward” and “pressing on.”

So, what is the PRize then?  Would you believe, more rest?

I’m not talking about the Sunday-afternoon-nap-on-the-couch-with-the-ball-game-on-after-crushing-the-all-you-can-eat-buffet-after-Church kind of a rest though.  This PRize is much bigger:

The PRize that I am pressing on toward is to hear my Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.  Come and enter your master’s happiness.  Take the free gift of the water of life and enter into my rest.”

To that end, I will continue pressing on—toward the PRize, and toward His rest.  I’m glad to have you along for the ride.