Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Plastic Fruit

Yesterday I got pelted in the face with plastic fruit! “Plastic fruit???!” you say? Yes.

A Christian guy I have never met before approached me and started a conversation. A guy who has no clue who I am, where I come from, what I have been through, what makes me “me”; someone who doesn’t know me from Adam. I could tell by the way he started the conversation that the guy was slightly out of touch with the “real world”, and yet I had the sinking sensation I was about to receive a sermon of some sort. That sensation became a reality within minutes of him talking, questioning, prodding, and preaching.

I don’t want to judge the guy, and I hope his intentions were good, but I do not understand where Christians get the spiritual arrogance to think that they can go up to complete strangers and force their views and opinions on them. I just don’t get it. I am a Christian and it makes me not want to be a Christian. I can’t imagine what it does to those who are not. I don’t want anybody from any religion to come up and start forcing their view on me out of the blue for that matter!

I would go even further to say that I don’t even want basic advice from complete strangers. Imagine the absurdity of a complete stranger coming up to you at a restaurant and saying, “Um, hey, I noticed you were talking with food in your mouth, and you also have elbows on the table! You really shouldn’t do that!” That would be strange! But for some reason, some people do not see it as strange to go up to complete strangers and force their “spiritual manners” on them.

I hate it when people feel the need to awkwardly force God into every conversation. To me, that is not fruit of a true and genuine relationship with God. Again, I am not trying to be judgmental because I don’t know these people’s hearts, but I feel like if someone’s relationship with God is real and true, there will be little need for forced words, because the actions and aura (Yes, I said aura!) of that person will naturally reflect the light and love of God.

If someone has a real connectivity to God, like any good relationship, that relationship will bear luscious, beautiful, juicy fruit!

People will see it.

People will feel it.

People will taste and see that it is good.

People will talk about it.

But only if it is not forced, fake or plastic.

It has to be real.

I do not believe God is sitting up with a notebook marking down how many religious conversations we have with people, how many times we are able to force His name into one conversation, and how many people we manage to “get to” in one day with forced banter about Him. When I read what James says about pure and undefiled religion, what Matthew 25 says about how we will be judged, what Isaiah 61 offers a hurting world, and what God sees as the fasting acceptable in his eyes in Isaiah 58, I see that God is more interested in how we behave, how we look after each other, how we support each other, how we let Him naturally shine through us, how we treat those that society considers “less” than us, if we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, speak out for the oppressed, look after the orphans, take care of the widows, invite the homeless into our homes…

Not if we merely speak hollow, empty words about Him, but rather if, like Jesus, we are living, walking, talking versions OF Him.

I love real fruit!

I hate being hit in the face with plastic fruit!