“The Sing-Off” and views of Christianity

You know how you get a mental image of something when you hear certain words?  If I say “carnival food” many of you think of cotton candy, funnel cakes, corn dogs, and sno cones.  That is one example.  Another might be if I say “politics”-very rarely does that conjure positive mental images!  Last night my family was enjoying the NBC season premiere of the reality show “The Sing-Off” where groups sing a cappella and are rated by judges.  The last group to sing was a group called “Committed” that is really a group of guys who are devout Christians and the video introducing the group to the viewing audience left me with a pit in my stomach.  There was nothing wrong with the video, in fact they all seemed like really classy guys.  Maybe that was part of the problem.  Too often the view of Christianity seems to be overtly clean cut and out of touch with reality.  I was desperately hoping these guys wouldn’t come out singing “Amazing Grace” or some other Christian song or hymn.  Instead they shocked everyone and rocked the house with a Maroon 5 song.  Today I wonder why I had that “Oh no, not again…” feeling before they performed.  Maybe because too many times the view of Christians seems unreal to many people and not even desirable.  I found myself wishing for Committed to just not embarrass the rest of “us” and hopefully the judges would be decent enough to them.  Where have believers gone wrong?  I don’t think I’m alone in how I felt about Committed before they performed.  Many people-no matter what they believe about Jesus-were probably thinking similar thoughts as mine.  Christianity obviously tends to have an image and perception problem.  I am really not sure if it is even possible to change the tide of the perceptions people have about Christianity, but obviously it would be terrific if when the word “Christian” is uttered the mental images you have in your mind are diverse instead of divisive, compassionate instead of condemning, integrity instead of ignorant, and listening instead of loud-mouthed.  I wish I would have been thinking that Committed would rock their performance instead of hoping they wouldn’t get booed.  In reality, what and how I think is just a microcosm of the bigger perception and problem of American Christianity.  I pray we would all work to change that-not so we are liked but so that Jesus is glorified.

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