I think it should be more along the lines of “look at what God has done!” There’s a subtle difference here: not witnessing to my difference, but instead bearing witness — telling the story — of the difference God makes. Forget about me and my buttons and t-shirts, and take a look at the incarnational triune God.

Probably one of the most known, and the greatest, verses in Scripture is John 3:16:

A recent discussion going on got me thinking about some of the words in this verse. Specifically, what does it mean to “believe in him”…

I think many “non-Christians” look at the all-or-nothing view and think that they have to get their lives in order before they can come to Jesus. On the other hand, many people take a legalistic view of John 3:16 and say “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. There I said it and now I’m going back to my regularly scheduled life.”

My personal take on it is that we are called on to have a heart for living a Christ-like life and that “whosoever believes” in John 3:16 means ongoing work in living that life as best we can. We will not be able to do it on our own. We must have the help of God. Even then, it is not immediate and I don’t think it ends in this life.

Speaking back to the original post, witnessing with buttons, I heard a great quote from the pulpit recently: “Your life may be the only Bible that some people ever gt to read.”

Thanks for a great blog,
Bubba

I would agree that the idea of a button as an effective witness tool is a bit absurd, the original post seems to be more inclined to taking shots at an entire group of christians whom they dislike. This kind of bickering among Christians is as unbecoming as the button.

Well, I think Laura indicated she approves of many of the AFA’s goals, but disapproves of their methods. She is probably actually a bit more complimentary about them than I would be. Yet I do not regard them as other than Christian; I merely think they are misguided in a number of ways. Were I sufficiently famous (or infamous), they would probably think the same way about me!

Being a Christian doesn’t make us unhuman. Your fit of anger was a part of our humanity. Being Christian means that this fit of anger may still happen, but what comes after that makes the difference.

I think we may differ here. I don’t think Christianity is a set of rules designed to make us nice; I think Christianity is Christ working in us to transform us. Now my action didn’t make me “not a Christian” or even a horrible person. But my action was inappropriate, and did not reflect well on the gospel message I teach. Thus it was something about which I should be concerned.

In fact, I would hardly regard my behavior in that case as civilized. Now afterward I made things right with all concerned–that was both Christian and civilized.

There’s a balance here between “I gotta be good or I’m not a Christian” and “it doesn’t matter how I behave.”

I would agree that the idea of a button as an effective witness tool is a bit absurd, the original post seems to be more inclined to taking shots at an entire group of christians whom they dislike. This kind of bickering among Christians is as unbecoming as the button.
To be fair to the AFA, their witness isn’t limited to just buttons. And while people may not like their understanding of Christianity, they still seek to follow the same Christ we are following. It takes an arrogance of position to assume that they are wrong in all aspects of their ministry.

Most people would have been uncomfortable with John the Baptist’s in your face approach to the people he met too, yet Jesus leveled no criticism at him, in fact offered a high bit of praise.

Secondly,

Your recounting of your incident where you were called to account for your cursing by the person who asked – I thought you were a Christian – while I don’t know the rest of the story, your response feeds the notion you are trying to avoid about Christianity – that it’s just a bunch of rules to obey to make us “nice” people. Being a Christian doesn’t make us unhuman. Your fit of anger was a part of our humanity. Being Christian means that this fit of anger may still happen, but what comes after that makes the difference.

I think CS Lewis in his writings and letters does the best job of adressing these apparent contradicitions between what we sometimes perceive as unchristian behavior and our following of Christianity.