I was on a conference call with a group of people completing a project and one of the key players was thanking everyone for their participation in adding to the success of the project. He had clearly not planned what he was going to say and began spewing praise that somehow looped in on itself and began to sound a bit weird. He tried to get out of if by making an analogy to Hannibal crossing the Alps into northern Italy during the Punic wars. You could hear everyone squirm on the phone hoping he would just stop talking. His message and intent were powerful, his delivery and method were not so much.

Words have power, far too much at times. We can have the best intentions or the worst intentions but if our words are not chosen correctly, our intentions do not always communicate. The funny thing is the words themselves are actually neutral, the power they possess we give them. The challenge that many followers of Christ face is centered on this. The intent seems simple, proclaim the message of a loving God who created this planet with the desire that man should explore the wonder of it and thrive. Then it gets challenging. It is a multi faceted conversation that starts with the human interaction with choice and ends with the self sacrifice of Christ allowing reconciliation. Almost every word in those two sentences needs to be unpacked, discussed, and chewed on to make them real in the life of the person doing the chewing. But for some reason, historically, the church seems to throw out the message like it is instructions on how to turn on a light. We then get frustrated when people don’t hear the message.

Maybe some people just want to present it in a clear and concise way to feel like they have achieved a clean understanding. We want to keep it simple and keep the main thing the main thing (along with other cliche’s from the 60’s and 70’s). In order to do this we limit the message by focusing it on the parts that impact us and we find most important. The problem is that we declare what is simple and risk judging what another person can handle and risk actually insulting them in the process. It is almost like we want to chew the food up for them so they can swallow it. (Sorry, that was a bit graphic but did go with my theme.)

Maybe others feel that God values some parts more than others. We want to focus on the parts that he approves of most so we can please him ourselves and help bring others up to speed quicker. Whether by good intentions or just fear, the message is altered by this. The problem here is that when we do this, we are actually usurping the throne of God to declare what parts have more importance and negating the other parts as less valuable. This comes across more like inviting a person for a steak dinner and only letting them eat rice and white bread. They may even like that but are not getting the flavor or nutrition of the meal.

Maybe still others want to feel the security of their own knowledge as a warm blanket. We focus the message only on what we can fully explain and dismiss the rest as “deep study” material. Maybe some things are, but if we direct people away from parts because we don’t like to talk about them, we are providing a gospel different than what God gave us. We give the people the menu at our steak dinner but tell them what to order and what will taste good. Some may appreciate this but is that truly providing a full dining experience?

The message was intended to reach into a person’s soul and confront the demons that hide there. It is a story about how a person connects to the Divine and revels in the power of the Creator. It gives life, true life, not just an approximation established by momentary success. It is the story of a God who’s anger was so great he could only extinguish it himself and whose love was so great he couldn’t stop himself. It is the story of how the infinite became finite to teach us to transcend the distance between them. It is a story that must be heard in full to be evaluated and must be chewed on to be understood. We need to stop being afraid and let people chew.