Share your faith by showing, not telling
AS I am writing this, it is the morning after my 71st Christmas day. The street is quiet. Why do I feel a little low? I’ve barely touched the slices of ham on the breakfast table. Is it a post-christmas hangover? Have I finally outgrown Christmas?
I can’t help but share an observation. During the holidays, I received a lot of pictures on my soc med accounts. Party pictures. Food pictures. Christmas decor pictures. Family reunion pictures. Exchanging Christmas gifts pictures. Out-of-town travel pictures. Happy times pictures.
But there was no posting of pictures I would have been delighted to see. Pictures of the sick, the aged, orphans, the lonely and the depressed being visited by kindhearted strangers. Not one.
Christmas, of all seasons, would have been the best time to put our religious beliefs in action. We love to talk about our faith and how we want to encourage change in individual lives, yet we always miss out when the time comes to show it through our actions.
One piece of news that made me seethe with silent indignation concerns a certain governor in the US who bussed and then dumped immigrants out on the freezing streets of a far-off city without shelter or coats on Christmas Eve. It was obviously a cheap political stunt aimed at pleasing his followers labeled as “Christian nationalists.” I don’t know if authentic Christians will see this for what it is, a gross misrepresentation of their faith, given the story of Christ’s birth and His message: “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.”
To add insult to injury, that same “Christian” politician posted a clueless message about Christmas being the season of giving and sharing.
But I don’t have to look elsewhere for mockery of the basic Christian message of love and compassion. Here in our street, on the morning of Christmas day, children from the informal settler community living in hovels along a nearby creek came in batches, knocking on closed gates with repeated cries of “namamasko po!” They were mostly ignored by Christian homes.
In contrast, the only Muslim family who lived in the same street and moved in just a couple of months ago opened their gate to them, giving out plastic bags of goods and coins.
As individuals and as a community, many of our fellow Christians love to talk and brandish our common faith especially on social media. We take pride in posting quotations from the bible, appropriating them as supporting points in even the most secular arguments. Many times we take them out of context just to slam the door shut on other people who don’t necessarily buy our line of reasoning.
If action speaks louder than words, do we Christians do as we believe? How are we actually doing? Let’s take a peek at the naked revelations of a recent survey of adults who profess to be Christians:
75 percent admit to stealing at least once from their employer.
60 percent of them can’t have a 10-minute conversation without lying at least once.
54 percent of marriages now begin with unmarried cohabitation.
90 percent of them believe infidelity is unacceptable, yet 41 percent of spouses admit to infidelity.
More than 50 percent admit they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught.
Last year, there were 21 billion visits to adult web sites.
What in the world is happening? We Christians supposedly got “the Good News,” but it seems more and more of us are not getting the message.
I am reminded by the term “split-level Christians” coined by the eminent Filipino Jesuit psychologist, Fr. Jaime Bulatao, referring to Christians who have “two or more thought-and-behavior systems that are inconsistent with each other.”
Ordinary Christians circumventing the message is nothing new and shocking. But now even priests, pastors, and lay ministers of all people are being embroiled in scandals. Using the words of actor Simon Callow who is also appalled by revelations of highly admired citizens and reputable people leading double lives, this can be described as “doubleness, the schism of the soul, the lie in the heart.”
When exposed, these people either deny it or play victims, justifying their transgressions as natural human weakness, temptations of the evil one and part of God’s test, and even throwing the expose back at the accusers with the inevitable “he who is without sin let him cast the first stone.”
One readily available excuse, so overused and abused it has lost its real meaning, is a line from St. James: “Love covers a multitude of sins.” Indeed, a high position and designation is often used to cover up a multitude of immoral transgressions.
Dismayingly in many cases, all is forgiven, and they go back to their sinful ways albeit in a more secretive manner.
This is why bible-quoting people are a turn off for me. I smell hypocrisy from a thousand mile away.
We Christians shoot ourselves in the foot by not doing what we preach, by sounding self-righteous, judgmental, indifferent, hypocritical, pushy, and all the perceptions that make our faith repulsive to others and make nonbelievers or silent Christians push back. No wonder, we hear comments from non-believers or lapsed Christians such as: “I’m sick of Christians trying to push their agenda on me,” or “Stop shoving your message down my throat.”
When we take a closer look at the life of Christ, we see something dramatically different. He let his actions do the talking. He even forbade his followers from bragging about the wondrous stuff he was doing.
Words have a way of inflating our sense of self. This is why when I was invited to be part of an online chatroom to exchange personal perspectives on the bible, I politely declined.
If we want to make the new year ahead of us truly meaningful, I suggest that we talk less and do more on making our faith a positive force for good.