Sunday, February 21, 2010

Cussing, Dancing and Discipleship

The other evening, I found myself in a long conversation with the grocery-store-checkout-girl. Oddly enough, we got on the topic of religion and it’s affect on culture. She told me, “No one around here is really religious anymore. I know, like, three people at my school who are really…you know…real Christians.” She added significantly, “…and one of those is a girl who cries when anyone cusses.”

Uh, what? I wasn’t sure how to reply.

“I don’t cry when people cuss.” Not my greatest response ever.

“That’s good.”

The conversation ended, but in my mind I began to take notes.

There’s a tightrope believers must walk in how we represent ourselves to the world. We have centuries of stereotypes to contend with. For instance, in the town where my grandpa grew up, Christian ministers were responsible for creating a “no-dancing” ordinance. According to a local pastor, dancing was the start of a slippery slope toward “adultery, divorce, murder, and little children left as orphans.” You can guess how Christians were perceived in that town—as a bunch of legalists with frowny faces.

However, on the other side of the arena, there’s the “lax Christian” stereotype who, other than attending enthusiastic worship services, has no Christian features coloring their lives. They may proudly emphasize that they don’t care who wins the governorship, that Muse is their favorite band, that they party on the weekends and love to dance. “Absolutely nothing, nothing,” they say, “makes us unusual. We’re just like everyone else, except we love Jesus.” The danger there is if Christ does not change us, can we honestly say He has dominion over our lives?

I used to think I needed to find a balance between the two extremes. I didn’t want to be law-oriented, but I didn’t want to be a Christian-with-no-Christianity either. All I needed to do was figure out a way to live radically for Christ, while still looking pretty normal and cool.

Since then I’ve realized that knowing Jesus is not about finding a balance in the stereotypes. It’s a third option altogether:

What does Christianity look like Biblically?

2 Corinthians 4:7 says, “But we have this treasure [the Gospel] in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” We’re the jars of clay; God is the treasure we hold inside.

Ni Tou-Sheng, a Chinese evangelist, expounded on the passage:

“Numbers of people have their own conceptions of a Christian, but these conceptions are one-sided, because they are just a creation of the human mind….

Here is a man [the apostle Paul] who is afraid and yet determined; he is encompassed by foes and yet he is not bound; he seems about to be overcome and yet he is not destroyed. It is plain enough that he is weak, and yet he declares that just when he is weak he is strong….

Do you begin now to understand what it means to be a Christian? To be a Christian is to be a person in whom seeming incompatibles exist together, but in whom it is the power of God that repeatedly triumphs.”

He explained that we’re not supposed to hide our weaknesses, or to train ourselves to be un-human. Instead, that humanity is meant to further highlight God’s strength and God’s grace which He gives to us. Nee added, “The flesh is to be withstood and given over to death—the death of the cross…but weakness, in this other sense, is to remain.”

In other words, I realized that Christianity isn’t trying to fall into any category. It’s not about being “the girl who cries at cuss words” any more than it is to be the “cool, cussing Christian” on campus.

Living for Jesus means living to represent Him with accuracy. It means God’s grace showing in our lives, because we’re vulnerable, honest and authentic enough that we don’t mind if others see. Being a Christian means pursuing the Jesus of the Bible, while inadvertently busting stereotypes as we go; it’s not the other way around. Being a Christian means seeking holiness--not necessarily perfection.

As for dancing laws and cussing…well, that doesn’t have much to do with it, does it?