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Say the magic word
I love people-watching when I’m out and about. Watching the people around me, seeing how they interact and how different or similar they are to me, subconsciously guessing at what they’re like. I was watching a mum and young child one day when I saw a not uncommon exchange. The child wanted something, and the mum said, ‘Say the magic word.’
It’s a strange thing to say to someone. We know there’s no magic power in the word ‘please’—it’s a simple exchange to reinforce the value of being polite. But this isn’t the only place where we turn such things into rituals or magical exchanges.
As Christians, we risk applying a similar attitude to our beliefs. We might tell people to say certain words (‘magical words’) as if implying that when they do, they’ll be right with God. But becoming a Christian and following God is not about a formula of magic words that come out of our mouths; it’s about our heart for God. You don’t become a Christian by saying the right incantation, just as you can’t spot a Christian by seeing who puts their hands up during the songs in church or by noticing who’s posting lots of Bible verses on Facebook (not that these are necessarily bad things).
How do we know people are followers of Jesus? Well, Jesus said we’d be able to see it. He said, ‘This is how everyone will recognise that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other’ (John 13:35, The Message).
Now, many of you will already be spotting the flaw here. There are certainly Christians who don’t seem to act in a very loving way. And this is the bit where a lot of Christians—me included—start looking over our shoulders, asking if we’re good enough and perhaps feeling inadequate.
But why should we be scared? Are we worried people are going to see we’re not perfect and judge Jesus on that? That they’ll see we sometimes fall short of our ‘love God and love others’ ambition? Or that they’ll see through the façade we may have put up of having it all together? Just between you and me (whisper it) … they already know!
I had a teacher at school who, when he heard someone saying that ‘all Christians are hypocrites’, told me there was no such thing as a hypocritical Christian. Christians, he told me, aren’t people who are pretending to be perfect and showing up others. They’re just flawed people who know they’re every bit as bad as everyone else, but have accepted an amazing, unearned gift of grace from God. They’re people trying to live out that love, but accepting they’ll stuff up sometimes.
Yes, sometimes we’ll fail, but the Bible says we’re all prone to failure. The great thing about being a Christian is that when we do fail, God helps us learn from that and get back on track.
Being that honest with people and even with ourselves—admitting we fail—can be hard. It can be much easier to float along doing all the ‘right’ rituals we like to think make people Christians. But we know people don’t have time for fake. And God doesn’t either.
Throughout the Bible there’s a regular drip of verses asking why people are turning everything into rules and not acting in a loving way. At the beginning of the famous passage on love in 1 Corinthians 13, the apostle Paul reiterates what Jesus says: anything we do as a Christian is pointless if we’re not doing it out of love.
That’s the ultimate test for Christians in everything we do: not whether we look and sound ‘religious’ enough, but are we doing whatever we’re doing out of love?
by Robin Raymond (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 30 May 2015, pp3.
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.