People Will Figure Out What We Actually Believe By What We Actually Do

You ever get a quote or something just stuck in your heart? Back in the summ

er, I read a pretty remarkable book called “Everybody Always” by Bob Goff. Bob Goff is a really fascinating guy. He kind of came to the forefront a few years ago with a book called “Love Does.” He just tries to radically love people where they are at. In so doing too many of us he seems “out there.” We are doing this book in all of our Family Groups here at church, and everyone has a reaction to Bob that ranges from joy to sheer terror! LOL! He is definitely different, but it made me think of this quote I came across one time and saved, apparently just for this moment:

Disconcertingly weird! That’s Bob Goff! LOL! I think the last line is a kicker for me. “They expose us with their honesty.” That’s so true, and that’s the reaction I think I see in the people who struggle with understanding not just Bob, but the Jesus He knows and writes about in the book. And that is simply about having our comfort shaken-up. We will dive deeper into that soon enough.

So before picking up “Everybody Always” I knew who Bob Goff was, but I didn’t know what the book would be about. I originally picked it up because I thought it might help me with some issues I was having with my oldest son, and it did, but I wasn’t expecting it to impact the way I see everybody. Always. I’m going to be blogging about my takeaways from “Everybody Always” over the next several weeks. I can’t recommend it highly enough! Go buy it. Seriously click here and get a copy!

There are several quotes in the book that just really have jumped out to me, but a couple has really bored their way into my heart. The first one is:

“People will figure out what we actually believe by what we actually do.”

In this digital world we live in now this has never been truer. How many people on your Facebook feed share some picture of Jesus, or identify themselves as a Christian, but then spend an awful lot of time posting hateful political rhetoric or arguing with other people? Too many. And it’s just become a digital version of what many Christians were already doing by surrounding themselves with like-minded people and creating a comfortable version of faith in God for themselves. They don’t what to wrestle with their faith, or who God is, or especially what exactly God wants them to do considering the grace He offers them. Often folks will claim to believe every word of the bible is true, but apparently not applicable to their own lives. No one in the Bible, in the New OR Old Testament had a comfortable faith. God never invites into a faith that is still or stagnate, or that settles.

You ever come across a stagnate pool of water? It’s gross! It’s got mosquitoes and moss and all kinds of yucky stuff. I’ve been to the Honey Island Swamp in Louisiana several times, and you expect it to be full of mosquitoes, and be dark, and smell because it’s a swamp. But it doesn’t! You know why? The swamp is actually part of the Pearl River system and the water flows, there is a current, it’s in motion. Mosquitoes and algae and the things that are associated with stagnate water don’t exist in water that flows. Where there is a current, there is abundant life.

Stagnate swamp ecosystems can only support so much growth. Eventually mosquito eggs hatch. Or finally, the sun dries up stagnate water because there is no consistent water source. But the Honey Island Swamp, fed by a river flowing into the Gulf of Mexico teems with life, it’s lush, and just keeps moving. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to!

The faith that God demands of us is one that is a flowing river, there is a current in a vibrant and active faith. When our faith gets stagnate we let our guard down and become complacent, and when we get complacent, we don’t produce good fruit. We can become cynical, jaded, or worse apathetic. Instead, we produce stinky, smelly, mosquito-infested water. And that’s precisely what happens when we get comfortable in our faith and don’t push ourselves to grow, not in knowledge, put just in going out and being unconditional love in a world becoming increasingly devoid of it. We get comfortable, and over time we grow hardened and self-sufficient, and we lose our current.

In Revelation 3 John mentions the church at Laodicea. Laodicea was a flourishing city in what is now modern-day Turkey. During the Roman Empire Laodicea became a major hub for multiple trade routes and became an extremely wealthy city. So wealthy, that when an Earthquake destroyed much of the city in 60 AD, the citizens declined funds from the Roman Emperor Nero and rebuilt it themselves. Wealth breeds comfort. In modern day America even our poorest are among the richest in the rest of the world. I can’t help but think of our country and our Christian culture when I read about the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3 beginning in verse 14:

“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

People were figuring out what the Laodiceans truly believed because they relied on their own power and wealth. As a result, Jesus here says he would rather they be openly hostile than be “lukewarm.” It’s easy to argue with someone on the internet. It’s a lot harder to go have coffee with them and learn about their lives and understand them. It’s easy to tell someone to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” It’s much harder to buy them some boots and teach how to put them on.

My wife and I have lost two sons who were stillborn early in the same calendar year. As you would expect it was much harder on her than it was on me. Some 5 years later now it’s better, but there are still things that can bring all the sadness and sense of emptiness back to her. It’s easy to talk about her for “not getting over it” or rolling your eyes when she shares about it. And when people do that, heck when I do that, it shows what I actually believe. I, and the folks that react that way, either don’t know or have forgotten, all the work she has done just get back to zero. But an uncomfortable faith is one that seeks to understand the journey of others. True faith seeks understanding and not condemnation. When people do that she feels heard, her spirit is lifted, and she doesn’t feel crazy for being human. It’s the same for anyone else. Far too often Cultural Christians see seeking understanding as some sort of validation of that person’s behavior, it’s not. And if we are honest, that’s all about appearances. That’s about the fear of guilt by association. And that’s not the heart of God, that’s the heart of a Pharisee. Jesus readily accepts guilt by association all over the Gospels. We’ve got to get over that nonsense, and if truly believe in Him and are to represent Him then we must accept “guilt by association” comes with the territory. Seeking to know someone who is different, or with whom you disagree is not validating their behavior, it’s validating them as a person. It’s showing them that they are a unique and beautiful son or daughter of God no matter where the journey has taken them.

So my first God Thump from “Everybody Always” was the reminder that I don’t have to agree with someone to just seek to understand them. I may never understand them, but I should love them anyway. And in that act, we show what we really believe. Bob Goff is exactly right when he says:

“People will figure out what we believe by what we actually do.”

What does what you do say about you?