Cracking the Christian Code

What Dogs HearHow often does our con­ver­sa­tion with non-believers seem like the comic on the right? Often we try and wit­ness, but our wit­ness is clouded by our Chris­t­ian “lan­guage.” In the short time I’ve been a believer, one of the things I’ve been most astounded to see is the wide­spread use of such vague Chris­t­ian jar­gon. We use terms like: “saved,” “bless/blessing,” and “fel­low­ship;” but they often become a “stum­bling block” (another exam­ple of “Chris­tianese”) in being an effec­tive wit­ness to non-believers. I’m con­tin­u­ally suprised to see at how pre­v­e­lant this lan­guage is. When wit­ness­ing to a non-believer we might use lan­guage like this in our tes­ti­mony (bolded words indi­cate “Christianese”):

“I was con­tin­u­ally liv­ing in such deep sin, but the Lord showed grace on me and saved me not on the basis of my works. It has been such a bless­ing in my life to enjoy fel­low­ship with other believ­ers regard­ing our strug­gles. I now have a per­sonal rela­tion­ship through the cross.”

It’s not that we use lan­guage like this on pur­pose to con­fuse those we wit­ness to, but it comes out of our expe­ri­ences of Chris­tian­ity. Believ­ers all to often asso­ciate with “Chris­tian­ity” and not the Gospel, but let me explain what that means. We have a nat­ural ten­dency to hold onto the things sur­round­ing our faith. Let me pro­vide a more con­crete exam­ple so I don’t sound condeming.

I met a girl who did work in Cam­bo­dia, and she explained how she wit­nessed to a lit­tle girl there. She told her that if she believes on Jesus than He will “come into her heart.” The lit­tle girl seemed puz­zled, and she asked, “when Jesus comes back does He come out of our heart?” Exam­ples such as this show us how con­fus­ing the lan­guage we use as Chris­tians really is. More­over, where did we ever get phrases like, “come into our heart?” God writes the Law on our heart (Jer 31:33; Rom 2:15), but that is a dif­fer­ent issue (of which I’m work­ing to under­stand as we speak).

On top of our wit­ness to non-believers this lan­guage has also become largely cliché. Tim Chal­lies wrote a great arti­cle a while back that got me think­ing about all of this, and it was writ­ten about the time I became a believer. I enjoyed the hon­esty of look­ing at the faith that sur­rounded him, and I’ve come to agree with his asser­tion. I first heard Aaron Shaf say “grace and peace” in his clos­ings, and at the time it was orig­i­nal; but now it has been adopted into much of the jar­gon of local Chris­tians. It has become cliché. Talk about cliché, con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian music is rid­dled with it. It is so pre­v­e­lant that it has no sub­stance. It is hon­estly dis­gust­ing. Where are the hymn books sep­a­rated by the­o­log­i­cal category?

One more thing. I’ve become very irri­tated with Chris­tians who use the solas of the Ref­or­ma­tion in a cliché man­ner. When Luther and his fol­low­ers pro­claimed “sola fide” or “[jus­ti­fied] by faith alone” they were in dan­ger of los­ing their lives. Now I see Chris­tians tag “soli deo glo­ria” or “sola chris­tus” with­out the sub­stance it was intended to have. The day I see “soli deo glo­ria” in an e-mail sig­na­ture I’m con­vert­ing to Islam. Don’t tempt me…

Well, I’d like to thank the Lord for the bless­ing of impart­ing this grace to you. By the power of the Spirit we will con­tinue to fel­low­ship through the cross. I hope it was encour­ag­ing. I pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.