The Ripple Effect...(from the archives)

*This post is from the archives from December 2012*

Ripple Effect

I met a man the other day with a very troubled past. Very troubled. He'd spent a significant amount of time in prison, with a past of drug and alcohol abuse. He's recovering and seems to be doing quite well. 

We spent a couple days together as we were painting my living room. We talked about life, faith, and our personal journeys. At one point we started talking about our church experience. This conversation has haunted me for days now. 

He explained to me that, as a child, his father would take him and his siblings to church every Sunday morning and evening...until one night. It was an after church congregational meeting. A church member began to stir up some controversy surrounding the preacher and had gotten this meeting together to drop the bomb on the preacher that he was going to be fired. The preacher and a significant portion of the congregation was oblivious to the plan. As he describes it, the meeting turned ugly, people were shouting and arguing, and as a result this man's father gathered up the kids and walked out of the church, never again to return...to any church. His father response? "We don't need this!" 

For this man, that was his last experience with the church. He relayed the story to me as though it had happened yesterday, but it had been 40 years earlier. 

I don't know who was right and who was wrong in this situation at his childhood church, and it really doesn't matter. What mattered were the attitudes and actions of Christians. Now, hear me out, I don't believe that it's fair to push blame on this particular church member for all of this man's poor life choices, but what if that moment, in that church building, became a defining moment for his life. 

He stopped going to church. That withdrew him from the people who could have influenced him for the positive. He begins to choose friends unwisely and ends up heading down a path of alcohol abuse, then into smoking pot, and ultimately in and out of jail on meth charges. 

Imagine with me for a bit that this church member approached his dissatisfaction with the preacher in a loving, Biblical, Matthew 18 type of way. Would things have heated up to a shouting match in a congregational meeting? Would that little boy be dragged out of church by his father never to return? I don't know. 

James 1:26 says "Those who consider themselves to be religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless."

We may never know the ripple effects of our words, actions, and attitudes on the lives of those around us. We bear a powerful name, the name of Jesus Christ, and we must never lose sight of that Name.  If we are the body of Christ...

- What is Christ (you) saying at your workplace?
- What is Christ shouting at practices and ball games?
- What is Christ watching on TV, seeing on the computer, and listening to on the radio?

What is the message of Christ you are speaking? Is it true to the message of the one who redeemed you, who called you out of slavery to sin, and rescued you to new life? What will the ripple effects be of your words, actions, and attitudes today?

-- "and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:5b) --