What Pink Taught Me About Being the Light of the World

I’ve been listening to Pink’s music lately, and what I really appreciate about Pink is that she has many uplifting songs, songs that encourage, songs that are empathetic, songs that give positive energy. And that’s when it dawned on me: we Christians have been understanding and doing the whole “be the light of the world” thing wrong.

We have not been the light of the world. We’ve been criticizing the world so much that we’ve become the snobs of the world. We’ve been telling people how bad and how unlovable they are that we’ve become the downers of the world. We’ve been judging the world, sentencing everybody to hell, that we’ve become the haters of the world.

Instead of being ambassadors of the gospel, we’ve become the bad news bear. Whenever we open our mouths, it’s always bad news, it’s always judgment and negativity. And because of that, it’s getting harder for people to experience the love of Christ and the goodness of the gospel through us.

But we have a choice. We can choose to be like Pink, bringing light and positivity to people’s lives. We can choose to brighten someone’s day by showing them they are worthy of love through both our words and deeds. “Speak the truth in love” can’t be our excuse to slam, put down, and judge people we don’t like or who are different from us.

Be a true light to the world - it really isn’t rocket science.

Comments

The Christian Golden Calves

Truth be told, as Christians, what we consider “biblical” often has more to do with our preferences than we’d like to admit. We constantly pick and choose the kind of God we want and can resonate with. Some want a harsh God because they feel a deep-seated need for justice or even vengeance; some want a rigid God because they find security in the certainty of rules; others want a God who would never send anyone to hell because they struggle to reconcile love with eternal torment. We as Christians are constantly casting our own Golden Calves. This isn’t to say there’s no absolute Truth, but I highly question our human ability to comprehend the complete Truth of an infinite being. If you hold strong beliefs, present them with sound arguments and reasoning. Don’t just label something as biblical or unbiblical, expecting others to take your word for it. I’ve made this mistake myself, and I hope to do better moving forward. Also, just because you strongly believe something and other...

From Theology to Practical Theology: does getting our theology right really matter?

There are many churches near the seminary I attended, some of which are made up mostly of professors and students from the Christian university that the seminary is a part of. Once, I visited one of these churches with a friend. We sat through the entire service and stayed for lunch. During lunch, we noticed people engaged in deep theological discussions, and their passion for the Bible and theology was clear. However, to our surprise, throughout our time there, no one — absolutely no one — greeted us, the first-time visitors. After we left, my friend and I both agreed that the church felt rather cold. This is a church very different from my impression of what a church should be. My earliest impression of what a church looks like came from the "home church" of my paternal grandparents. Due to their declining health, my grandparents were no longer able to attend Sunday services at their church, even from as early as I can remember. Yet, every Sunday evening, brothers and si...

Mary Had a Choice

Reading the story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10 with my Female Christian Ministry Leaders cohort this morning, a fresh perspective dawned on me. Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made - likely overwhelmed by fixing up a feast for Jesus and his entourage all by herself, while Mary, her sister, was sitting and listening to Jesus teach instead of helping. It’s not that Martha didn’t want to sit at Jesus’ feet and spend time with him like Mary did. But in a culture that valued hospitality and conditioned women into domestic roles, Martha felt obligated to all the busy work she was doing. But then Jesus’ response to Martha’s request for Mary to help was completely countercultural: Mary “has chosen” what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. Wait, what? Mary had a choice? This must have come as a shock to many who were present at the time. It’s mind-blowing, because women in that culture didn’t really have the option to not take on domestic res...

Challenging Faith

Search This Blog