There are mantras and truisms aplenty about the difference between actions and words. There’s perhaps one I know of (“the pen is mightier than the sword”) which claims words as the more impactful of the two, though I think only because of the actions brought about by thoughtful writing. Many more speak to the weight of actions over words: “Do as I say, not as I do” is a common phrase because our natural instinct is to follow examples, not take instructions. I think any parenting resource will tell you the same: children tend to grow up following your example, not your teaching. And to get to the heart of it: “actions speak louder than words.”
While this may not be true across the board, it seems to be the case that most individuals will discount what someone says if their actions contradict it. So what’s that say about evangelism and how we present the Gospel?
Implied People
To steal a topic from my personal, less faith-oriented blog, I’d like to introduce the topic of the implied author and the implied reader, a set of tools from literary analysis (though they’re also applicable to other forms of media). These “characters” exist in the book, but they aren’t part of the story; they represent what we can infer about the real people even if we don’t know who the real people are – such as in the case of the Letter to the Hebrews.
Though we don’t know for sure who wrote the letter, or to which church it was written, we can infer many details about both parties from the text. For example, the author wrote in a style similar to Paul, except that he refers to receiving the Gospel second-hand rather than personally. Again like Paul, the author was well-versed in Hebrew scriptures, able to pluck an extremely obscure name out of the earliest parts of the Torah and teach on the character for a whole chapter. Similarly, the letter must have been written to a group of people steeped in the scriptures, likely a group of Jewish Christians. We also know they were likely facing persecution, which dates the letter and its readers to the late first century.
These are all traits of the implied author and reader respectively, because they’re inferred from the text, but they speak to traits of the real author and the (original) real audience. To show you a case where the real and implied people are very different, I’ll turn to The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. Though the book’s authorship is externally ascribed to Lewis, it purports to be a collection of letters written from the titular Screwtape to a fellow demon, Wormwood. These two characters make up the implied author and reader, wholly divorced from the real author (Lewis) and reader (me, my wife, perhaps you, and many other individuals who are not demons).
Who’s Your Author?
Setting that thought aside for a moment, I’d like to establish a pattern of authorship being associated with God (or the Trinity broadly) as a foundation for my broader point. There is the direct statement of Peter in Acts 3:15, which refers to Jesus as the “Author of Life” in some translations. Hebrews 2:10 uses the same Greek word (“archegos“) to call Jesus the “author of their salvation”.
That Greek word could be translated a few ways. The ESV translates it in Hebrews 2 as “founder”, which I think is a word that fits nicely with the opening words of the Gospel of John. It could also be translated as “captain”, evoking Proverbs 16:9 for me personally. The other word suggested by Strong’s Concordance is “prince”, a word that I don’t think I need to defend as being applicable to Jesus as a ruler over his followers. All of these passages further ascribe to God and Jesus authority and control over life, people, and creation broadly.
And ultimately, God is author of the whole of the Bible and the story it tells. He’s in the opening words of Genesis, creating the very world in which he later creates mankind; and the end of the book is the Day of the Lord, when He will once again perform a great creative act to bring humans back to Him. Indisputably, every Christian should see clearly that God is in ultimate control of their own life.
Your Story’s Implications
Let’s circle back to that other topic and ask a simple question: if God is the author of your life (as He is the author of everything), what does the story of your life say about Him? In other words, what would an outsider infer about the Christian God based on how you live?
A good place to start is comparing your life to the features of God. I think it’s too easy to start with a feature and find examples in your life, so I recommend going the other way – assess your life, and see what features come out. Ideally you should ask others to be brutally honest to avoid your own biases and blind spots. (If you’re feeling particularly brave, ask people you don’t get along with.) How many people would use the fruits of the spirit to describe you? What about the two most important commandments? Features of God such as righteousness, mercy, and justice?
No individual can display any of these perfectly, and I doubt most of us will come close to displaying most of them even imperfectly. However, I think this practice can serve as high-level guidance for how well you convey at least some aspects of our Lord and Savior. Hopefully, at least some of these positive descriptors will stand out against the backdrop of the world’s values.
There’s another side to the coin, though – one that lets us get much more granular with our assessments.
Your Implied Reader
Every story conveys information not only about who its writer is, but who it was written for. In the case of The Screwtape Letters, the implied reader is completely fictitious, so it’s no slight against us humans when a demon is belittled or judged uncharitably. However, the things we do and the lives we lead are stories before very real people, which means our implied readers are recognizable portraits of those around us. In these circumstances, the differences between our story’s depiction and the genuine article are critical.
I mentioned above that you should ask people who you don’t get along with what they think about your life. I think that’s because when these individuals read your story, they see something said about themselves that they don’t like, and that bears inspection.
It’s possible such a person sees something they misunderstand. Maybe they have different theology or a different worldview, or maybe they just get irrationally frustrated at something harmless you do. Maybe there’s context or history with the Church that colors their view of you, or maybe they’ve only interacted with you in a context where they’re predisposed to dislike you.
However, you need to be prepared for the possibility that they see an accurate and valid criticism. If you aren’t prepared for that possibility, then you’re forgetting the simple fact that you’re not perfect. You need to be in a place to accept that criticism, assess it with counsel, and act on it. I think it’s easy to imagine how even something small could be perceived as being more important by someone who doesn’t share the same value system.
For a concrete example, let’s consider a stereotype of a conservative Christian that I think exists because there’s some truth to it. You can imagine this individual – let’s call him Evan – is the kind of person to say “I don’t hate [people who are gay], I just don’t agree with their lifestyle.” Let’s also say he has some vice or fault, as we all do. Maybe he’s divorced, or he has a drinking problem, or he’s bad with money. In this scenario, it’s not hard to imagine how someone who is gay would see even relatively minor judgment, then feel increasingly slighted by the perceived hypocrisy; maybe they even think of Matthew 7:1-5. You can almost see the cartoon: Evan’s caricature, bottle of liquor sloshing as he totters toward two men holding hands, declaring that their lifestyle is immoral.
Suddenly, their view of Evan is dominated by this single fault, and their view of his faith similarly impacted. Even setting aside Evan’s motivations for holding and declaring that particular opinion, the outcome is that he’s put others down and put a wedge between them and his potential evangelism. They see a man who bears the name of God as a justification to put them down.
“I Am” Won’t Change
I know I’ve used a touchy topic as an example, so let me be clear: I am absolutely not saying that you have to be affirming of any LGBT+ point or identity in order to evangelize effectively. Rather, I’m asking you to consider carefully how you present your thoughts on your faith broadly, because even in disagreements there are more loving and more harsh ways to hold an opinion.
In other words, I’m not telling you to change Jesus to be more presentable, I’m asking you to change yourself and how you present the Gospel to be more in line with Jesus and how he shared the good news.
The woman at the well is an example I’ve used before. To reiterate my point from that discussion, Jesus’ first words to her weren’t “I don’t agree with your lifestyle.” Rather, he first treated her as any other person, refusing to judge her for her faults and sins. Yes, he did call her to repentance, but only after forming a loving relationship with her and after she expressed an interest in following his way. (It’s also worth noting that she was a Samaritan, an offshoot of Judaism, which meant they were starting from similar worldviews and moral frameworks.)
People are complicated; I put that in the tagline of this blog right alongside life broadly. I’d suggest most of them are just as complicated as you are. Both despite that fact and because of it, I think there’s a lot of guidance to be found in simply asking how you would react in their shoes. How do you think Evan would feel if someone said they didn’t agree with his lifestyle of drinking the occasional beer, or his lifestyle of being divorced? Does that sound like the charitably, sacrificially loving savior? The redeemer who said “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened”? The God who became man so he could eat with those living in sin and ultimately provide a new hope to them?
Maybe as a practice, you want to pick out one of the titles of Jesus or the names of God, and see how you can reflect that in your life over the next week or month. Obviously, the intention here isn’t to be “Yahweh” or “Adonai”, but to show God’s word is true and that He is lord. Similarly, if Jesus is your redeemer, how could you show those around you the freedom you now have? If you are taking up his yoke, if you are bearing your cross, if you really are following him – how well are you showing others the way?
Life in Tension 