Caring Christians (Part 1)

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” 

John C. Maxwell

This is a quote I’ve heard a lot of times and one that I fully agree with, or at least I think I do. As I’m sure the case is with many people a one liner can be catchy and powerful, even if it is not used to mean what it originally did. I am not familiar with any work of Maxwell or any of his own religious convictions except for what can be seen above. To be honest I thought it was quite hard to understand this idea in more than one way when it is talking about Christians wanting to tell others the story of Jesus, you have to show that you care about them before you can start sharing what your beliefs are, if you didn’t show you cared why would/should they listen?

This post is going to have to come in two parts as I think there’s a lot that I want to write. Let’s start a bit before this, why on earth are Christians going out and telling people the story that they believe? An answer that a lot of people will give to this is of course because Jesus tells us to, this can be found in Matthew 28, which reads,

Then Jesus came to them and said,“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

 A great passage telling Christians to share what they know and believe, but, I wholeheartedly believe that this is not the reason why Christians should “do mission”. I don’t feel that as Christians we do things simply because we are told to do so. I’ll try and explain fully what I personally believe. In order to do this another passage from the Bible may help, this one is a little more obscure than The Great Commision but I feel that it is just as important.

“I hate, I despise your feasts,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
    I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
    I will not look upon them.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos 5:21-24

In this passage from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) the Israelites are being rebuked for following the commandments they were given to follow with regard to sacrifices and worship. They were doing all of the rituals and practices to the letter but God was not pleased with their offerings. They were doing the right things for the wrong reasons and this displeased God, their worship and actions were not heartfelt, they were merely hollow offerings. When Christians focus upon a command as their reason for doing something, they can lose sight of the real reason for doing an action. I believe this can happen in doing mission, it becomes a command to be obeyed and has moved away from what it really is and should be.

So why should Christians go out and spread the Gospel if it isn’t because they’re told to? Kirk in his book What is Mission writes,

“God’s intention for the world is that in every respect it should show forth the way he is – love, community, equality, diversity, mercy, compassion and justice”.

Mission should not be seen as something that we have to do but don’t want to. In striving to become more like Christ we need to develop our love of others, a love that will provoke us to act to help those in need, both physically and spiritually and care about and for all we meet. We shouldn’t do mission because we are told to, we should do mission because we are compelled to through the love we have for others and the desire we have to enable them to have life to the full.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-18

What should we expect Christians to be and do?

It’s been a while since i have written anything that I’ve not had to or that is not part of my university course. As i spend a few hours for prayer at church, I thought that it would be good to reflect on some issues that come up through the week and share those reflections.

During the past week lots has been happening, hearing a thought provoking sermon, celebrating the marriage of friends and in the news stories of Christian’s not behaving as they are expected to behave. All these things have made me think and reflect both on the positive aspects and also the negative. One thing that kept on creeping up were claims of how every Christian should act in various circumstances (especially marriage). To start reflecting on these events I think it is useful to start by sharing something that happened in my own life. After I had finished my A-levels i decided to take a gap year and ended up working at a Christian holiday centre. In the first few weeks there I started realising more fully the expectations of a Christian life and the different way that I was supposed to behave. This sounds like it could be the start of a great testimony of me realising the true nature of Christianity and the beginning of a life following God more closely, in some ways this did happen, but, it also started me trying to live up to expectations that I did not fully understand or think through. I started looking down more on people who did not act the way I though they should, leading me to say some things to people that I should not have said, hurting others in trying to be Christian showing them an unloving, legalistic image of Christianity. As well as this my beliefs became what people thought they should be and not what I thought they should be. At this point I think it is necessary for me to say that I wasn’t being told things that were wrong or that were damaging in themselves, simply that in my desire to conform and belong, impressing those around me and being seen as a good Christian, I misinterpreted what was being said and applied it incorrectly. Back to the events of this week now, the sermon and the wedding service were great times of worship and getting together with friends. At the same point, I was reminded of these expectations being shown to people that can be misunderstood and harm people. The main issue here was that of submission within marriage, here are the couple of verses used.

²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Ephesians 5

¹ Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, ² when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.

1 Peter 3

I am not going to attempt to suggest my own interpretation or understanding of these verses here but I will share what I (helped by my wife) think the problem can be in sharing these expectations. When this expectation is shared it is not often given the full care and attention that it deserves and needs. I have heard women be told to submit to the authority of their husband with no extra guidance given as to how this practically works and if there is ever a time when submission is not necessary. You may immediately think that if the husband wants his wife to do something that is unchristian obviously she should not submit, but this is not told when sharing this message. Another thing that is not talked about is whether a wife should continue to submit to her husband in order to win them over if they are part of an abusive relationship after having been told that the only reason for divorce can be adultery. These things do happen and there are people who feel trapped in relationships because of the faith they have because of what they feel is expected of them from what they have heard. Expectations can be dangerous.

The last event that has happened recently that I will talk about are recent news stories. Being more specific it is recent survey taken by Richard Dawkins to see if those who claim to be Christians fit the categories on his questionnaire. Some of the questions I feel are about fundamental Christian beliefs such as Jesus being the Son of God, others however, such as being able to know the first book in the New Testament, I feel are irrelevant to Christian identity. The questionnaire shows something that is not solely the view of atheists in the country but also that of a number of Christians, that there are people who claim to be Christian but in fact aren’t. The question that came to me is what I have been talking about so far, what do people expect of Christians? And are these expectations realistic, helpful or correct in all situations?

The simple answer of what is expected of Christians is someone who goes to Church regularly, reads all of the Bible regularly, understands and can answer questions on the bible, prays, believes Jesus to be the son of God, and should be morally perfect. On this I agree fully that this is what should be expected of Christians. But the question remains if people do not fit all of these categories are they not Christians? By no means! (Cheesy I know) This is what God wants people to strive for, not what he wants people to have attained before becoming or identifying themselves as Christians. To be Christian it may not be such a surprise to hear that you don’t have to be perfect or agree fully with the teachings of your local church on certain issues. In fact you can go further and say that to be Christian you need to know that you are not perfect and in fact do not live up to the standards that you should and therefore want to change. How this should be done practically is hard to answer and is a question that deserves more thought, hopefully I will be able to come back to this with some more ideas. But for now it is important to realise some of the problems that expectations can have for people and think about this in your life.

So what about these expectations then, where do these come into Christian life? I’ll start this answer with the negatives, they do not fit in by pressuring people to adhere to your point of view or  partially sharing them with potentially dangerous consequences (as in the submission above) and they are definitely not to be used as emotional blackmail or to destroy people’s self identity. The expectations on Christians come from God and not from humans, the role humans should play in enabling people to fulfil these expectations I feel should be through encouragement and giving information.

¹³ But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

Hebrews 3