The Right Kind of Scandal

The Right Kind of Scandal--July 20, 2016

"Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." [Colossians 4:6]

The followers of Jesus ought to sound scandalous, but for the right reasons.  We ought to sound reckless with love, foolish in our willingness to sacrifice ourselves, and audacious in our trouble-making kind of welcome to outsiders.  We ought to turn people's heads, and we ought to make people blush.  That's what Jesus did, after all--from dinner parties with tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers, a reputation for being a drunkard and a glutton, and his habit of including people who were "supposed" to be left out, while not paying attention to the religious and political so-and-so crowd.  Jesus was scandalous, so, at least in some way, the followers of Jesus ought to sound scandalous, too.

Ah, but the question is--as the old line of Gerhard Ebeling's goes--what is the right kind of scandal?  I remember reading that line of the old German theologian years ago, and at first thinking to myself, "Oh, no!  We Christians are never supposed to be scandalous.  We are supposed to be bland and mild-mannered and not to call attention to ourselves, and we should only ever say things that people will call nice and pat us on the back for."  But Ebeling kept speaking.  He writes that sometimes (maybe a lot of the time, these days) we cause the wrong kind of scandal--by angry yelling, political hackery, all-caps-style barbs traded online, and bumper-sticker smugness--so that people are already so turned off by what they have heard us yelling that they do not stay to listen to the real scandal about a God whose love gets nailed to a cross.

We have an amazing message to announce the world!  History's revolving door of empires and power-mongers will keep turning, but God has broken into that world in Jesus with a new kind of Reign in which the lowly are lifted up, the merciful and poor are declared "blessed" rather than "losers," and the true source of Power is seen in self-giving love.  That is scandalous to a world that applauds for pomp and pageantry, big talk, and big sticks.  It is scandalous to say that the greatest show of real power was a life offered up in love on an empire's execution stake.  It is scandalous to say that the greatest "success", the greatest "big win," of all of history came from someone who washed the feet of his thick-headed students 24 hours before his death.  It is scandalous to say that our calling is always love in the face of hatred, rather than returning evil for evil or hatred for hatred.

And in these days, such a message--as shocking as it will sound in the world's ears if we say it honestly--is exactly what is needed.

But... no one will listen to that scandalously gracious message if they have first been turned off because we were jerks leading up to it.  If we turn people away with the wrong kind of scandal, they will never hear the saving scandal of the new kind of life Jesus opens up in the Reign of God--what we sometimes call "the Kingdom."

And the worst of it, the bitterly ironic part of it, is that usually we are most blind to our own vitriol while we are in the act of casting ourselves as offended, put-upon targets.  Look, here's the thing:  even if someone else does criticize, or verbally attack, or upset Christians, we do not get to be jerks back to them.  That undercuts our witness.  And I must confess, I have been ashamed, far more times than I can count, at the truly awful, hateful, wrong-kind-of-scandalous things I have heard and seen from fellow people who are striving like me to follow Jesus.  If I am really honest, there have been plenty of times when I have thought to myself, "If I were not already a Christian, this person... this remark... this "like"... would make me not want to be a Christian or listen to what they have to say.  This is just so bitter, so entitled, so vitriolic, so self-absorbed."

The flip side to that, of course, is that I have to consider the very real possibility that there have been times when I have been the one acting or speaking like a jerk, and causing the wrong kind of scandal so that others could not hear the Good News over my own bluster or self-righteousness.  Of course, those are my blind spots--the reason I wouldn't realize I have come off as a pompous blowhard in the past is that there are places within my own faith and thinking that need the correction and clarification of others.  And I can only face the truth that I might just need some of that correction if I have the humility to start with the notion that I might be wrong.  Jesus won't let us down, and Jesus won't turn out to be all wet... but I sure as heaven might get it wrong in how I speak about him, think about him, and believe about him.  If I can dare to see that... and to say it... not just once, but as a daily admission that lets me be self-critical and listen for what others might hear that I cannot, well, then, maybe I can hold the wrong kind of scandal at bay so that others can hear the Good News of Jesus from my lips without being turned away in disgust first.

So, let me propose something for all of us--something of an experiment in discipleship.  Let me propose that we actually take these words from Colossians seriously, and think about everything we say, write, post, "like," or communicate, and ask first the question, "Is there the possibility that I am coming off as a jerk here... and if so, what is that doing to my witness to Christ?"  Because here's the other thing we need to be clear on:  being a witness is not an option.  We will all bear witness to whatever or whoever is really our God (or our god), whether we think we are "doing evangelism" or not.  You cannot name the name of Jesus and not be a living walking billboard for him--the trouble is that for a lot of us, or maybe for all of us at one time or another, we have spray painted a lot of all-caps angry graffiti over our own billboard, so nobody wants to hear about the Jesus we say we follow.

The old cliché is right: you may be the only Bible, or at least the first Bible, somebody else ever reads.  You may be the first picture of Jesus somebody else sees.  And if we are distracting attention from the scandalously good news of God's free grace in Jesus by being utter jerks in every other area of our lives (as well as in our talking about faith), nobody will see the real Jesus.  And they will have no reason or desire to peel past the outer layers of our vitriol to find him underneath all the garbage we have piled on top of him.

Today, what if we asked the question, "Will this be a scandal to someone else who hears it?" before we speak?  And then if the answer is yes (and sometimes it will be), what if we ask the follow up question, "Is this the right kind of scandal--the scandalously good news of Jesus--or is this me being a jerk?"  And what if we dared to get other people around us who will help us see our blind spots and call us on it when we really are at risk of pushing people away from Jesus?

Sounds like a tall order... but a necessary one.  We had better pray on it...

Lord Jesus, make us witnesses of your true scandal, and make us honest about the ways our ungracious words have turned people away from you.  Make us the right kind of scandalous witnesses to your Reign of love.