It should be noted that often times when we begin to express our faith in culture, we receive a less than hospitable reaction. The language that we often use, if we are honest, is often either not understood, not accepted as fact, or creates something similar to a jousting match rather than an expression of the faith we hold so dear. The result is a struggle to have conversations with friends and neighbors about their spiritual condition.When we use words like gospel, salvation, repentance, and sin, we have to realize that the people we are talking to may not have the same understanding, if any at all, of these words as we do. A person who grew up in a conservative Baptist tradition will understand these words differently than one who grew up in an Methodist tradition or a Catholic tradition. For someone who grew up with no religious tradition, what these words communicate may have no meaning. Or it could be that their understanding of the words may arise from the mockery that often comes from the media types who poke fun at Christianity.
When we try to communicate the true message of Jesus, we use the words above quite often. But what if we are using these words to provoke a reaction based on definitions or implications that are inaccurate or even wrong? At best we are doing a poor job of communicating; at worst we are positioning people to misunderstand the message of Christ from the very beginning.
It could be that in order to be effective in how we talk about our faith to others we need to get back to the real understanding of what these words mean and how they affect our own understanding of the message of Christ. It could be that we have mis-defined the very message we use to express our faith in Christ to others. Maybe what we need to do is get back to an healthy understanding of what we share and, if need be, reframe the discussion using different, though highly biblical, language.
Over the next few days, or weeks, I hope to begin helping us understand the language we use and offer some possibilities to reframe the discussion in a biblical, Christ-centered manner that faithfully expresses the faith we hold so dear.
You have those every once and a while my PT guy said. Oh well... - posted on 09/10/2010