Speak Somalian: Part 2 of 2

My father always told me, "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care." Well said dad. What leads us as Christians believe we can show the world Christ without even trying to understand what language they speak?

I can hear the retorts already. "We should lift up the cross and it will draw them in!" "Don't sink to the world’s level, pull them up to ours!" "We must be in the world but not of the world". To all these, I would say, "Yeah. That’s all true." However, how much time did Jesus spend in a Church building? Paul? Peter? From what I recall, Jesus spent a lot of time with whores, thieves, drunks, demon possessed, and liars. I distinctly remember Him saying, "They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Now, I don't want to be that guy that constantly reads scripture to you, but doggonit! There is some freakin' awesome stuff in there!

My thought process has gone something like this: If I don't try to reach the world with the culture they are in, how will I reach them? Paul used sports metaphors, and fighting terms to relate to his people. At times, Jesus used parables that were so culturally relevant at the time, I struggle to understand why they were significant at all! This is because He understood the people he wanted to help. He let them know he understood what life looked like for them. 

One could use hyperbole to insinuate that I am saying we should be just like the world. I am not saying that. I am saying that if the world sees us as a group of people that looks down on them, or is so far removed from the culture they embrace that we can't even understand how they communicate with each other, we have failed.

Let’s get back to loving our neighbors, being good to those that despitefully (spell check just informed me that this is no longer a word, so I typed it in word, and word told me that it was a word! Take THAT blog spell check!) use us, and start realizing that we are the church. Each of us. Let’s take the church to the people that need us. Maybe we should be so accessible that Pharisees fear us and the sinners seek us. (as a side not, lets also not forget that we too are sinners and have been redeemed by an AWESOME God)