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Who impressed me the most?

Rick Brandenburg

As a child you may have been told that “God is watching you, so you better be good.” I’m not sure if the lesson there was supposed to be about a loving God, a God to be feared, or that parents just get frustrated and sometimes pull out all the stops. Well it certainly is true that God is always watching us, caring for us, taking note of every step and every breath. But rather than only be concerned about whether or not God sees us do something “bad,” I’d like us to consider who else might be watching.  

In this article I’d like to share a real world experience I had in my own neighborhood over the past year.  The intent is not to be judgmental, but rather to further reinforce some of the points Jon Miller has made in previous sermons about how the unchurched perceive us as Christians. I recently had an experience that caused me to think about this a lot more.

Last summer we were at a July 4 neighborhood cookout and our new neighbors who recently moved in behind us were talking all about their new church -- how much they liked it, and how active they were in their church. Some other neighbors across the street and one house down didn’t attend and for the most part keep very much to themselves. They are Muslim.  

Last fall, neighbor C (C for Christian) rented a Bobcat and during a testosterone-induced destructive sequence, plowed out all the plant life in his backyard and proceeded to do the same to all the bushes, etc. I had dividing our property. He completely destroyed the drainage easement necessary for proper draining of my neighbors’ properties and mine. In addition, he plowed out all the survey stakes for four total properties and actually bulldozed over one of the neighbor’s leach fields.

Now you can probably guess that I wasn’t real thrilled with his actions. This was particularly true in light of the fact that I had just come home from oral surgery. I expressed my displeasure and he indicated how sorry he was and how he was going to make everything right. He would plant bushes, restore the drainage area, get our properties resurveyed, and so on. After two months of inaction, I made a house call and he assured me that he still was going to do it, but had just been busy. Now seven months later, no new survey, no privacy, a swamp behind my house, and I still get no signs of any positive response from him.

A month ago, neighbor M (M for Muslim) accidentally hit my mailbox with his truck. He stopped immediately, came to our door, apologized, and said he would fix it in less than 24 hours. This he did despite traveling to three stores to find the right parts, restored it to better than original condition, and came to the door asking me to look at it to make sure I was satisfied.

If you were an unchurched person, which religion would have impressed you the most? Now, I recognize that this is one incident and there have been a lot of acts of kindness or responsibility by Christians. That’s not my point here. My point is “An unchurched person is watching you, so you better be good.” Remember the Scripture about whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me? It wouldn’t hurt if we always kept that verse in mind would it? It could be the best evangelistic tool we’ve got.