I’ve been reading a book by Brian McLaren about evangelism called More Ready than you Realize. In one of the chapters he discusses the labels the Christian community places upon those who have yet to follow Christ. We label them with such terms as “lost,” “unsaved,” or even “non-Christian.”
The danger of labels is that it creates an “us versus them” mentality, or an in-group and out-group. While on the sociological side, labels are useful to help us refer to and think about large groups of people, we have to be very careful of the language we use. We never want to unintentionally elevate one group and degrade another. This language may push away the very ones we want to reach with God’s message of love and acceptance. McLaren goes one to explain that the term “lost” may not be accurately used in describing people not following Christ, but better used to describe Christians.
“Sometimes I wonder if we would be wiser to apply the term “lost” to ourselves. After all, if you send a letter to someone and it never arrives, you say the letter is lost. Similarly, God has sent us into the world as ambassadors and agents of God’s love, and yet many of us have never really arrived at our destination. So, in that light, who is lost – them or us?”
May we “find” our destinations as Christians who live their life on purpose with love enticing others into a relationship with our Savior.
The danger of labels is that it creates an “us versus them” mentality, or an in-group and out-group. While on the sociological side, labels are useful to help us refer to and think about large groups of people, we have to be very careful of the language we use. We never want to unintentionally elevate one group and degrade another. This language may push away the very ones we want to reach with God’s message of love and acceptance. McLaren goes one to explain that the term “lost” may not be accurately used in describing people not following Christ, but better used to describe Christians.
“Sometimes I wonder if we would be wiser to apply the term “lost” to ourselves. After all, if you send a letter to someone and it never arrives, you say the letter is lost. Similarly, God has sent us into the world as ambassadors and agents of God’s love, and yet many of us have never really arrived at our destination. So, in that light, who is lost – them or us?”
May we “find” our destinations as Christians who live their life on purpose with love enticing others into a relationship with our Savior.
