Perceptions

On his Thursday post this week Mike Cope made this comment, "I’m feeling in the minority right now. No governor or senator from my state has yet announced a presidential bid for 2008," which elicited these two comments from readers:

After GWB, can America ever trust another Texas politician? - ses

And

c’mon ses~ tell me another president who has been thrown a 9-11 terroristic blow and a war WITHOUT borders? NONE!!!!!!!!!!I think GWB has done a fine job with the information he had at the time. He is an honest, God fearing man. Would you have wanted to be in his place, I sure wouldn’t have~~~~ God Bless America and GWB - lee

It got me to thinking about perceptions we form... how we see things in our lives... what influences the way we interpret stuff. The quotes above form a good illustration of what I mean. Many (perhaps most) of Mike's readers are believers with cofc backgrounds who probably have many ideas and beliefs in common. Yet the perceptions of these two about our current president and how he has run his administration seem to be polar opposites. (BTW, I also think it interesting that others didn't bite and turn the entire discussion toward politics... probably a good thing.) OK, so basically when I read this a bunch of thoughts started running through my head. Stuff like: Jesus recruited guys with differing political views... room in the Kingdom for... They'll know you're my followers by the way you love one another... Unity and uniformity can look totally different...

Stuff like that. Then I got to wondering just how different the perceptions of people who aren't Christians (the folks we believe God wants to reach through us) about Christians are from our perceptions of who we are. Now, I realize that there are a wide variety of beliefs and practices among those of us who call ourselves Christians (or believers or disciples or followers or... ), but my guess is that most of that stuff is totally off the radar for most who are not believers. I've just been wondering how dissimilar our self-perceptions are from their perceptions about us... and to what extent either are accurate (although I guess anyone trying to judge that would need to do so looking through the lens of his own perceptions, eh?).

Anyway, Virginia and I have been reading Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller a few pages at a time on weekday mornings before work. His perspectives on most things Christian usually make me stop and think. This morning our reading included the following from pp. 190-191, and it again led me to wonder how our actions or rhetoric have negatively impacted the perceptions those outside the church hold about believers.

This battle we are in is against the principalities of darkness, not against people who are different from us. In war you shoot the enemy, not the hostage.

In this way, the chief difference between morality in a relational context to Jesus and morality in the context of the lifeboat (his metaphor for the way most of us live) is that one system works for people and the other works against them.

It is obvious when reading scripture that what you and I commonly think of as morality is thin in definition. Some Christians, when considering immorality in culture, consider two issues: abortion and gay marriage.

Moral ideas presented in the New Testament, and even from the mouth of Christ, however, involve loving our neighbors, being one in the bond of peace, loving our enemies, taking care of our own business before we judge somebody else, forgiving debts even as we have been forgiven, speaking in truth and love else we sound like clanging symbols... and protecting the beauty of sex and marriage.

Morality, then, becomes the bond, the glue that holds our families together, our communities together, our churches together, and most important, builds intimacy with Christ. Morality, in the context of a relationship with Jesus, becomes the voice of love to a confused community, the voice of reason and calm in a loud argument, the voice of life in a world of walking dead, the voice of Christ in a sea of self-hatred.

The trick Satan has played on us involving his spin on morality has not gone unnoticed by those outside the church. (He goes on with examples.)

I wonder what those outside the church actually do perceive about us... about what we really think is important... about how we define morality... about what it means to be a Christ-follower. Perceptions...