Today I ashamedly admit that I spent an entire day watching "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" forgoing even my quiet time with the Lord. Not that I even enjoyed the show but I was interested in their portrayal of Christianity both in leadership perspective and in the follower perspective. As I spent hour after hour watching mindlessly I began to think. There was once a question posed to me does the media portray society or does society portray the media?
As I sat and watched the characters on the show struggling with death, pregnancy, premarital sex, drinking, and drugs I thought about how neither of those questions were the primary concern here. Let me just share with you my thoughts and we'll see how this all connects together.
The writers for this show had to get their ideas from somewhere. This is where fiction comes from; real life events manipulated by the imagination. So, our society sees Christians as (taking scenes from the show) goody two shoes, judgemental, hypocrytical, lying, sneaky, two faced, manipulating, promiscuous people who themeslves are confused about their faith. It got me to thinking about the so called christians I've run into in my life and they fit the bill perfectly.
After a Cardinals game this weekend, I had the privledge of running into a drunk man in front of the stadium. As we talked there for a while, with a "christian" on a megaphone behind us proclaiming to all they needed to "repent and turn from their evil ways" and explictly listing off sins. This man said, "You know who that sounds like... Adolf Hitler." I couldn't argue with him, he was absolutely right. This megaphone man, though with possible good intentions, was reminding all around him of Hitler, represnting Christianity to the lost world. Most of the conversation was hard to understand due to the constant buzzing voice of the megaphone man, the slurred speech of the drunken man, and low rumble of the exiting crowd. I did manage to make out that this man did believe in a god but not that Christ is God. Christ was just another good man and that in fact 1200 years before Christ historians have said that there were other men like Christ in the being born of a virgin, doing miracles, having 12 disciples, and raising from the dead. This guy knew the story of Christ, very important details missing (but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say the missing pieces were due to his drunken stupper). And yet knew nothing of Christ.
This leads me to beleive that we as believers are not doing our jobs correctly if even at all. If we truely lived as Christ called us to live I don't think people would have much to mock. It's because they know what Christians are supposed to be doing, yet they see what we are doing and know that the two don't match. We are called to rescue the perishing, care for the dying, protect the widows and children, feed the hungry and opppressed. Love as Christ loves. Our society is more concerned with soical injustices than we as a body of believers are. If they were to see Christians really loving this way they would be moved by it. There wouldn't be a mocking of it, rather an inspired movement because of it. If we were more concerned with loving people for the sake of Christ than making sure they know the books of the bible in order, or the names of the 12 disciples there wouldn't be such an abrehsiveness towards christianity. But we (myself included) have done an awful job at discipling. We get people in church to secure our numbers but then do nothing to ensure their growth and development as a true Christ follower. They see what the Bible says about true love and yet see the contridictory message of the church and leave with a bitter taste in their mouths and a hardeness built around their heart.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that true Believers have to stop living of the world. And I know this is much easier said than done but isn't it worth the struggle. Fight your way from the sterotypical Christian life and live one that is on purpose with Christ in loving the homosexual, the promiscuous, the murderer, the gossip, the drug user, the alcoholic, the aethiest and the rebelling christian. Love them as you love yourself and see if that won't make a difference in how the media portrays us in how the drunk man sees Christ.
Wouldn't it be awesome if Christian characters weren't even on shows anymore because there was nothing to poke fun at. Or if they were the main character that stood firm throughout the sitcom, stuggling with the same things everyone else does but handeling it in a God honoring way. Wouldn't it be great if the only thing the drunk man on the corner could say about Christians is "Man, they really love whoever that Jesus guy is and they sure do love people." Wouldn't it be nice.
