In the previous post oh so long ago, we talked about going the extra mile – helping those who can’t give us anything in return. In the intervening four months, we welcomed a new girl into our family and a giant project at work ate the rest of my life (80 hour weeks, that sort of thing). Those are my excuses for the gap between that and this. Of course no one has asked me about it :-).
Also in that intervening time I have been putting much thought and action into these faith concepts. Since not many people currently read this and no one is dying without new content, I am finding it more important to write something well-crafted than to just write something. But I am also going to try to keep these shorther – people got lives :-).
All preliminaries out of the way – I have been thinking a lot of how Jesus teaches us to do good things. It seems from the things He says that He is not only interested in what we do, but why and how we do it. Here’s an example:
Matthew 6
Giving to the Needy
 1“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
 2“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 3But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Obviously it’s impossible to do every act of righteousness in complete secrecy. But the intent is clear (from this and many other verses) – Jesus’ command is that we think carefully about our motives for doing the good we do.
This is what makes people of faith so different than other activists. Our primary audience is Jesus, not public opinion. While we are certainly interested in teaching others to participate in the same activities, this is not our primary purpose for doing it. And whether or not someone participates in the same activities does not change our opinion of their importance – we are doing what Jesus told us to, not what we in our infinite wisdom have decided is important.
As such, it becomes very easy to recruit others to the same world-view – it isn’t ours, so we don’t have to be defensive, reactionary, or militant. We simply show by our humble service a better way to live and interact with the world as God intended. And that is not only radical and revolutionary, but also very infectious.
Let me give an example from a completely unrelated field that should bring this into sharp focus. There are three main rivals in the computing platform space – PCs running Windows, PCs running Linux, and Apple computers running the Mac OS. For the sake of argument, let’s leave out the open-source guys and compare the two you have to pay for (oooh – maybe I’ll get flamed by Linux enthusiasts!). Most Windows users use Windows because that’s what the computer came with that they were provided for work or school or from grandma for Christmas. Most Mac users use a Mac very deliberately – they have specifically chosen to spend more on the hardware and software and deal with lack of Mac support in the business space because they want to own and use a Mac.
Both have their reasons, but since Mac folk have made a conscious choice, they tend to be far more opinionated on the subject. This has lead to the birth of many a “Mac Evangelist”, most famously skewered in what is arguably the best Simpsons episode ever.Â
I have no issue with Mac. In fact, I have great appreciation for the platform, the hardware, and salivate when I see an iPhone (curse you, two year contract with another cell phone company keeping me and iPhone coolness apart!). I do, however, use PCs exclusively in my work, and do so by choice, even though I work in the graphic design / video production / web world, and two out of three of those worlds are primarily peopled by Mac dudes and dudettes.
I have my reasons. First, I was too broke and too cheap in the beginning of my career to afford Macs. Now that I can, I have too much invested in PC software and gear to switch over (cause I’m still cheap). And in the Web space, which occupies 90% of my time now, there are a lot of things you just can’t do on a Mac (unless you boot it into the evil Windows OS).
These arguments hold no water with the Mac pushers. They openly mock my choices and deride my sad subservience to the evil, monolithic Microsoft Corporation (’cause Apple is far more open-source and non-monopolistic, unless of course you want to use your iPhone on another cell phone service. But I digress). Their scorn of my non Mapple-ness (see Simpsons clip above) does not make me want an Apple more. It makes me want to defend my lack of one. And it leaves a little twinge of unhappiness, cause if I could, I would join the club.
I don’t spend a lot of time trying to evangelize people in the way of the PC. Since you can get one almost for free these days and everybody’s got ’em, I don’t have to. I also don’t actively look around for Mac users to tell them how silly they are for using a platform I don’t. But if someone observes the work I do, and asks me what I use, and then asks me why, I am glad to give my reasoned defense. And I often have more productive conversations in that scenario than I do trying to defend myself from angry Mac-abees, flaying me with their white iPod earbuds, because a person who asks a question is usually interested in the answer.
I think the reason so many folk think people of faith have a “I’m better than you because of the good stuff I do” attitude is because…well…we sometimes do. Rather than beat people over the head and try to advance our own sense of self-worth by displaying our righteous acts like an iPhone whipped out at a client meeting, the goodness God calls us to is to be evident to everyone, but the main target audience is Jesus Himself. It can’t be hidden, but we also can’t do it just to be seen. In the process of living like Jesus taught us, lots of folk will see it and ask questions. and then we have the chance to have a real conversation with someone who wants to know, not just an innocent PC-toting bystander.
This is of course where the analogy falls a bit short – we are also instructed clearly to purposefully go out and make disciples, which means we have to do more than passively do good and hope someone will ask about it. But most of our evangelizing is wasted on those who aren’t listening, and some attention to soil preparation and tactfully waiting for the right moment wouldn’t hurt our chances – might help quite a bit.
Long way to say a simple thing. But that’s how I roll. Gotta go reinstall Windows on a PC with the blue screen of death now. Stupid PCs.
