What Difference Does Being a Christian Make for How I Respond to People in Need?

Yesterday, Ken and I began a sermon series which seems to explore the question of what difference it makes to be a Christian. We'll cycle through a number of themes...marriage, children, singleness, disagreements, money... But we began with the question of what difference it makes for how we respond to people in need.

While Ken preached at the two traditional services, I preached at Koinonia. There, I began by asking people to share, more generally, words or phrases that describe how Christians are supposed to treat others. Chris typed them in so they appeared on the screen as we went. You can guess the responses...things like:

humble
loving
caring
generous
see people for who they are
open-minded

The list could go on and on. Think for a moment about what you would add to the list.

Then, I asked folks to look at that list and share what non-Christian leaders and groups have or do teach the same things. And that list was just long, if not longer. These things we listed, of course, are after all, basically universally accepted ways we are all supposed to behave.

This is where we as Christians often lose people’s attention. Because it doesn’t take most people all that much time to come back at us with the assertion that there are lots of non-Christians who live much better lives than Christians. And we can’t really argue with that. It’s much easier, isn’t it, to claim the label of “Christian” than to make it make any difference for our lives—let alone to make us different than those who are not followers of Christ.

It seems to me to be a colossal waste of time and effort to be a follower of Christ, if all her really is, is a great teacher. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis went so far to say,

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.

Therefore, our response to this question cannot simply be a list of universally accepted tenants. Otherwise, at best, we cannot but expect people to conclude that Christianity has little to nothing to offer them, and certainly little hope of making any difference in this world.

But, of course, we cannot stop there. I think there is an enormous difference that following Christ CAN make. And I think it comes down to the very orientation of our lives, especially how we treat others.

Several years ago, I was watching a biography of the actor/performer Will Smith. A phrase stuck out to me. Someone said, “It’s his world, and we’re all just living in it.” Now, I don’t know Will Smith, and in all fairness, this line could have easily appeared in the biography of any celebrity, right? But I also think it could serve as a good definition for SIN in all our lives. St. Augustine talked about SIN as a focus on self—being curved or turn in one oneself, instead of rightly oriented to God. This focus on self is the deepest and most dangerous way we can understand sin, I think, and it is the hardest to really get at, because it is so deeply ingrained in us.

Experts tell us that babies literally believe the world revolves around them. They cry, and their parents or other caring folks come to meet (or at least attempt to!) their needs. It seems to me that it is a sign of a well-cared for infant if he truly is convinced the world revolves around him (study after study shows what devastating effects a lack of attention and touch can have on children who are not held and closely cared for as babies).

The problem is, it seems to me, that we spend the rest of our lives growing out of that conviction that the world revolves around us. That things should be ordered to our greatest comfort and desires. And let’s be honest, some of us do that more successfully than others. And even those who do it well are better at sometimes than others.

As Christians, we have entered into a community which affirms that not only is it NOT our own world, but that it is God’s world, and as such, we are called to orient OUR lives to GOD’S will. We do so not out of our own strength, but because we worship a God who came to us, who though it was God’s own world, took the form of Jesus, and giving up comfort and ease, died on a cross for us. If God, in God’s world, has done this, who then are we to hold anything back?

Christians, then, respond to people in need not out of a sense of obligation or even of properness. We help those in need because it is who we are. It is who we are called to be, at our best, but God’s grace. To let go of our self interest and focus, and give without reservation. Not worried about out own comfort, or even our own “rightness”. We are called to be wise, of course, but not callous. We recognize that we cannot judge a person’s heart.

Yesterday marked the national celebration of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (his actual birthday is the 15th). One of his famous sermons deals with the parable Jesus tells about a knock at midnight. The parable describes a friend interrupting a neighbor’s sleep with a request. Jesus says that even if the friend doesn’t care to answer, because he is annoyed, he will, just to make the neighbor leave. How much more so does God answer when we call out? Therefore, I think this parable also tells us that we are called to never ignore that knock—who are we to do so when God so readily answers us?

Christians help others by first and foremost orienting all of our lives to God through Jesus Christ. We seek to grow less and less focused on ourselves—and in this, indeed, helping others helps us. It reminds us whose world this is. And whose it is not. We give sacrificially as Jesus did, not just when it is comfortable and convenient. And let it never be said of us that we answered ONLY because those in need wore us down. Rather let it be said that we have been quick to respond, and have held nothing back.

In closing, I want to share a clip from The Colbert Report, a comedy show. Now, politics aside, I think this is one of the best summaries of how we as Americans and as Christians often talk a good talk, but fail to be all that different from most other people. I invite you to check it out if you haven’t already seen it. I think his critique is actually pretty darn on target for a lot of us, without relationship to political party.