During church services on Sunday mornings I occasionally
imagine what one of my non-believer friends would think were he sitting next to
me. How would he react to the worship music, the presentation style of the
pastor, the substance of the sermon or the attitudes and actions of those
around him? I consider how his experience of church would impact his impression
of Christianity in general. To be honest, I often find it difficult to imagine
him staying for the duration of the service. So much of what happens in an
American church would strike him as inscrutably alien and, frankly, silly.
That’s not a criticism of churches, but a genuine worry nonetheless. I worry whether a good many of my friends would
reject church for trivial reasons, reasons they feel are relevant and
persuasive despite my objections. I suspect that they would demur on aesthetic
grounds, to the music, perhaps, or to the church’s strange adornment. Most of
all, I worry that they would find troubling the particular manner in which
Christians occasionally speak. While their skepticism of church and
Christianity would be ill founded, I can’t deny that at least some of my
well-educated and otherwise open-minded friends would avoid church for the same
reason they avoid other people or people groups: because of certain oddities in
their dialect.
Let me give
you an example. We’ve all heard or perhaps even used the term “it’s a God
thing”; it’s ubiquitous in some evangelical circles. I must admit that I cringe
at hearing it, not because I doubt the intentions of the person speaking or because
I doubt whether God actually presided over the issue in question in all of his omnipotent
sovereignty, but because I cannot help but hear the phrase as my non-Christian
friends hear it. To them – and perhaps to me, as well – the term reduces what
is purportedly a matter of tremendous cosmic significance to a benign
colloquialism. Strictly speaking, very little in this universe isn’t a “God thing” – the question of
the nature of evil notwithstanding – and so it’s something of a platitude. It’s
also a phrase completely at odds with secular cultural conventions, which is to
say it’s not cool. In fact, it’s painfully uncool and I suspect most of us know
it. It invites ridicule - rightly or wrongly – and to what end? “To praise God,”
you might answer, “to give Him the credit He deserves.” Indeed, but in the
absence of any narrow biblical prescriptions concerning how to praise Him,
ought we not find less irksome methods of praise when in the presence of
non-Christians? Do the negligible benefits of employing dubious theological
platitudes warrant compromising our witness as Christians?
To the
example above add a list of other phrases, such as “God showed up” and “on fire
for Christ,” both of which are perfectly valid expressions of profound encounters
with God, but perhaps not the best means of conveying those experiences outside
of an exclusively Christian context. Perhaps we ought to monitor and modulate
our speech around non-believers who we know will find those types of utterances
offputting.
Some of you
will no doubt feel I’ve overstated the matter – perhaps so. I am certainly not
suggesting that we ought to pander to the culture and refrain from saying anything
deemed “uncool”. The central claim of Christianity, Christ and his atoning
death and resurrection, is widely regarded as uncool and yet we are
theologically committed and eager to announce its truth to the world. I merely mean
to stress the impact that theologically trivial issues such as our voluntary habits
of speech make upon non-believers, habits we aren’t biblically obligated to observe
and which may color the cultural reception of our message. What may edify among
the body of believers might harden the hearts of those who need to hear our
message most.
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