Sharing the Message in a Sophisticated Society

Our society is one of sophistication.  We know a lot of things, we own a lot of things, we investigate a lot of things, and we believe a lot of things.  We are rich beyond the wildest dreams of most people in this world.  The things we construct nowadays are amazing monuments to human ingenuity, including buildings and bridges and extending to powerful computers we can put into our pockets.  We have it all.

In a society that is so sophisticated and is learning all of the time, it is not easy to be a witness for Jesus.  It isn't that the message has changed.  Rather it is that the message falls on more and more deaf ears.  Why do I need Jesus when I can purchase my happiness in periodic chunks?  Why do I need Jesus when I have so many things to do that I can do on my own?  We are wealthy, insulated, and above all things cynical.  And ultimately our society is both blind and deaf spiritually.

The Apostle Paul lived in a sophisticated society when he wrote both of the Corinthian letters in the New Testament.  Corinth was a city of sophistication which was a major point of world and regional trade.  Paul was a guy who worked to support himself, bragging at one point that no one else supported his ministry financially.  He considered sharing the message with others a privilege and loved that he was able to do it for free.  To do this, however, he likely had to work long hours making tents, awnings, and perhaps even sails for ships.  I imagine him having a space in the marketplace of the time, which put him right in the middle of all of the activity in his city.  He likely used his space to share the Gospel message with many in the marketplace.

But Paul lived in a skeptical society just like we do here in America.  Sharing the message while living among people who think they have things figured out can be a very tough road.  Paul understood that, and he commented on it this way:

2 Corinthians 4
³ If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. ⁴ Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.

That means that we need new methods, right?  Perhaps a new way of sharing the message.  More training perhaps.  Maybe the ways in which the message about Jesus and what He did for us is no longer relevant, or needs to be dressed up a bit to make it appealing to our society.  But Paul continued his earlier thought by stating that in the midst of all of this, his message stayed focused on Jesus.

⁵ You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

It is unfortunate that so many churches and ministers have gone the opposite way, spending huge chunks of time making the message about themselves, and making their church into self-help seminars.  It isn't supposed to be this way, and Paul called out those in his own time who were doing that same thing.  The churches that did things that way were plain to see, much like the churches that advertise themselves now by using the pastor's name or picture.  The message became the person and not Jesus.

So if it isn't about any new method of sharing, how do we do it?  Paul gave us his usual keen insight.
 
⁷ We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure.^[b] This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

Here are some things I know from my limited experience in making things made out of clay:

• It is made up of tiny particles of dirt and materially has no value.  You or I could go to any river and find more clay for free with nothing but our hands to work with.
• Clay pots can't be recycled as glass can.  If you break a coffee mug, for example, it is forever broken.  It is good for nothing other than to be thrown away.
• Clay is easily replaceable.  

So Christians are just like clay pots.  By ourselves, we are ordinary.  We are cracked and chipped, and ultimately on our own have no real value.  We are more like a Solo cup than a gold goblet.  Yet we contain in us a treasure of monumental value.  Why would the Lord choose to put His amazing treasure in such a container?

The treasure is placed in this fragile, worthless, and ordinary clay pot of me and you because the message is about the treasure, not about the pot.  The treasure shines more brightly out of the ordinary container.

One great secret of the Christian life that few Americans seem to understand these days is that the life is not at all easy.  Your life is improved with Christ in it, but it is not made easier.  Amazingly, your circumstances make less sense as a Christian than they did before you believed.  There are more pressures, more testing, more difficulty and more moments of anguish.  Each of those moments develops cracks in us, the ordinary clay pot.  And as more and more cracks develop, the treasure shines through the cracks and becomes more and more evident.  

It isn't that we become stronger over time.  Instead, we may become weaker, which paradoxically allows Jesus to shine more brightly than ever before.  And with time it also becomes more obvious that the clay pot is only being held together by God's Spirit.  When this becomes evident to everyone around you, there we find the point of it all.  Jesus uses the weak, the unable, the impossible person, to shine His light through that person.  The message is about the treasure, not about the pot. 

2 Corinthians 4:7b- This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.
  
I believe that the most effective way to share the message in our sophisticated society is by living as the broken and ordinary vessels we are and allowing the treasure of Jesus to shine out of our lives.  People should see us living in radical obedience to the commands of Jesus.  They should see His love and His life shining out from us, even in difficulty and in spite of difficulty.  What I'm describing is not a joyless existence where the person is frowning all of the time, crushed by their burdens.  Instead what I'm describing is a person who is only held together by the Lord's Spirit, who presses on because the Lord Himself is empowering them to trudge with one foot in front of the other.  The person doing this is doing it because they love the Lord so very much and have complete understanding that He loves them to a degree that could never be measured.  Knowledge of such love always seeps out of us in our actions and words.  It can't be faked.

So live your life in front of others in this kind of radical devotion.  Let the light of Jesus shine through your cracks.  Let others see you as ordinary and weak.  Then, the treasure within will undeniable.  The message is about the treasure, not the container that the treasure is in.