OUR WORLD VIEW: What's Your Witness?

Sometimes I’m embarrassed to be a Christian.

Okay, okay, settle down! I knew it was provocative when I typed it. But hear me out here.

All too often, when I meet some random, interesting, fun-loving NON-Christian, and in the course of the conversation I tell them that I am a person of faith in Jesus Christ, the whole mood of the room changes. I can see it in their glazed, narrowed eyes. They’re imagining me holed up somewhere, wild hair, rifle in one hand and paint brush in the other as I make the sign I’ll be carrying in front of the local abortion clinic or the gay/lesbian center.

In reality, I have a few gay friends whom I adore. I've talked to them about my faith, and they've largely rejected it, but I still love them. I have never, would never, choose to get an abortion if I found myself in that situation…but I have supported and prayed for a couple of friends who have. Did my heart break over their choice? Yes! Did I yell at them, condemn them, or bomb the clinic before they arrived? No.

One of my favorite television shows is The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon consistently mocks his Texas upbringing with a born-again mother (played masterfully by Laurie Metcalf) who talks to Jesus and quotes the scriptures. It hasn’t been lost on me that, when I join the audience laughter, I’m laughing from an opposite perspective. I’m laughing at the joke they didn’t mean to make for me, but I still laugh. And you know what? I sing along with the theme song on a regular basis.

The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!
Bang!

Do I believe it? No, of course not! But it’s catchy. And I love The Bare Naked Ladies (the band that sings the theme; not actual bare, naked women).

Last night, I watched a Lifetime movie starring one of my favorites of the male species, John Stamos. John and I certainly aren’t tight buds or anything, but I knew him briefly during my time in Los Angeles. He was on General Hospital, the show where I eventually worked for about 15 years as a personal assistant and later a publicist to some of the actors. He was 18 or 19 years old back then; I was around 26, shell-shocked and running away from an abusive marriage, hoping to recreate myself, with no clue where to start. At the time, I only knew John Stamos as this “kid” who was just unusually sweet to me at a time when sweetness was a little hard to come by … Then he moved on, and “Uncle Jesse” made me swell a little with pride at how that kid had blossomed. When I saw him on tour with the legendary Beach Boys, I screamed my head off for him. What a cool and talented “grown-up” he had become! These days, in my advanced senior years (no comments, please!), the age difference blurs a bit for me; when John Stamos appears on the screen, I have a hard time looking away. Not such a “kid” any more, is he?

So when I heard that John was going to play a pastor in his new Lifetime movie, my heart stopped for a few seconds. Since praying Christians are generally lumped into the LUNATIC category in movies, books and especially newspaper headlines, I thought I knew what I was going to see. I still watched it because, well, it’s John Stamos! But I prepared myself to like him a lot less afterward.

As a writer, I think I’m far more critical of the storytelling process than the average viewer/reader. But Secrets of Eden was a wonderful and entertaining surprise to me. Not once did I feel like he drifted off on that familiar road of dumbing Christianity down. Instead, he portrayed his character as a deeply conflicted HUMAN Christian with grace and depth. Shame on me for expecting the worst! It’s just that I’m so used to the portrayals of Christians coming off as foreign to me. Very seldom do they accurately represent me as a praying, Jesus-loving Christian. John Stamos represented me in Secrets of Eden. And I’m pretty sure he isn’t. A Christian, that is. Of course I don't know that for sure, but he sometimes tweets about meditation, so I’m guessing he has joined the growing ranks of my Buddhist friends. Regardless, he represented ME in that Lifetime role.

All these words to really say just this: In my opinion, nothing stains the beauty of faith in Jesus like letter-of-the-law, Bible-thumping religion. Although I try, in everything I do – in all of my relationships, in my work as a writer, in the overall purpose of my life – to represent the loving, inspiring, truth-seeking example set for us by our Lord Jesus Christ…sometimes I fail. And sometimes I feel like I’m a snowflake up against an avalanche. I don’t think anyone who knows me questions my belief structure; I’m pretty sure and hopeful that people know who I am by the way I live my life. But do I hit them over the head with it? Do I make them feel LESS THAN because they don’t believe? Hmmm…

The truth is, I may have come across that way a time or two. Sometimes in my zeal for the Lord I have come to know so well, I think I’ve rolled right over a couple of people. But in each of those cases, my witness failed, and the spirit within me later chided, according to Ephesians 4:1-3.

“…I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

Make no mistake! Like the pastor John Stamos played in Secrets of Eden, I am human. Sometimes so human that it sickens me. But the humanity in me is covered well by the redemptive shed blood of Jesus Christ, and His guidance and faithfulness picks me up, dusts me off and sends me on a better path.

To be completely honest, I’m not sure I liked the ending of the movie – which I won’t ruin for you, if you haven’t seen it – but what I loved was the fact that a lesson was learned, and a sacrifice was made.

It made me think.

Do I behave in ways that, for outsiders watching me, portray the bigger outside picture of the lumped-up façade of Christians as crazy zealots or angry guys on the street corner screaming at passers-by about fire and brimstone? Or does my witness gently show others that faith in Christ cannot be replicated by anything else, that Christianity provides the ability to change, to heal, to find true purpose?

What about you? What do you think your witness is to your family, your co-workers, neighbors, friends? And what will you change today to improve that witness so that it shines beyond your own humanness?