Honesty - By Vicky Beeching

One of my favourite articles by one of my favourite bloggers...

I was thinking today about honesty, and how it relates to our Christian spirituality. We know that God “desires truth in the inwards places of our hearts”, as the Bible says. We know we are called to live genuine, open lives, telling the truth about how we feel and who we are.

But do we?

Sometimes I visit churches, and a lot of what I experience, feels fake. A kind of spiritual cheerleading, with painted grins and music to pep you up, without having to address the more difficult elements of life and faith. Sometimes I feel like we’ve created a somewhat polished and glossy version of it all, to try and attract people.

The truth is, Jesus never tried to make following Him look attractive. He never dressed it up with cultural relevance. He didn’t bring a light show or the best coffee, and set all of that up, before he spoke to a crowd. He was honest and raw, saying that to follow Him was “laying down your life” and “taking up your cross”. Basically, He let people know that following Him would bring them deep joy, but that it would be very difficult too, and might cost them their life.

I read the slogan of a church the other day that said their mission is “to make Jesus attractive”. I don’t think that’s our calling. Jesus didn’t dress up what it meant to follow Him. He died, naked and bloody, which doesn’t sound to me like trying to be attractive to people.

I think the thing that will attract our generation to join the Church, to accept Christ, is HONESTY. Honesty about the struggles in our own lives. Honesty about OUR own doubts about God. About the parts of the Bible we find very hard to come to terms with. When we throw away our “clever Bible answerbook” replies to our atheist, agnostic or ‘not sure I’m a Christian anymore’ friends, and we let them see authenticity in our eyes, I think we’ll see a revolution in the Church.

(Let me be clear – there are many churches that I love! I’m not wanting to sound cynical. I just feel like there are some things that need to be said).

Worship leaders – how does that affect us? Do you show up at Church, put your own struggles and doubts aside, slap on your ‘stage face’ and start smiling and cranking out an upbeat song? Let’s give ourselves permission to tell the people if we’re having a hard day - it’ll help them know it’s ok if they are too.

Church leaders – let’s choose to make Jesus real, rather than making Him ‘attractive’ and trying to get people into our community by presenting a life of victory and permanent ‘spiritual high’. Let the people see your struggles and your raw authenticity about your doubts and fears.

Again, let me clarify that I’m not writing from a place of cynicism or anger. I just love Jesus, love the Church and love the lost. I want us to portray Jesus accurately, and not create a veneer that will crack, and leave a post-modern generation walking away in search of something more authentic.

Honesty isn’t just the best policy, it’s the only policy if we want to build Churches and record music that will stand the test of time, and not leave people months or years later feeling like they’ve been sold a shady second hand car that broke down on their way home.

Anyone with me?

Follow Vicky at: http://vickybeeching.com/blog/