This guest post has been written by my good friend Joe, who is currently studying ancient history, and is prayer secretary for Warwick Christian Union. He has already published Minecraft-based fiction; and is a great metaphor for the Trinity (but that’s for another post). If you’d like to write a guest post, send me an email at guestpost@edsslipper.net!

A couple of mornings a week I head off to my local pool for a swim. Generally these sessions are quite relaxing; I meander up and down quite happily … except for one thing. Space Invader. This is the title I have (probably quite unfairly) ascribed to one of my fellow swimmers. The reasons for this are two fold:

  1. She has rather dangly arms and legs.
  2. She consistently collides with me, getting in my way, no matter how far I move over in the pool to escape.

spaceinvader

Photo: theyuped, under CC License.

As Christians, I feel it is very easy to slip into being a Space Invader in the way we share our faith. I do this on occasion. I enter my kitchen and just as one of my housemates says something like “Oh Jesus” and I manage to butt in with some glib comment like “That’s the guy!” Cue my cheesy grin and their momentary stare at me as if I’m some kind of alien before they turn away and get on with their conversation. Somehow in those moments I’ve become as annoying to them as Space Invader is to me, because I was intentionally thrusting my faith in the way of their normal activity. Paul warns us about these situations. He talks about being careful “that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” If us invading other people’s space with our faith becomes a stumbling block to their coming into relationship with Christ, then this probably isn’t the best way of evangelising.

However I feel I have to stop here with criticism of approaching people with our faith before I become heretical. You see, Jesus was possibly the greatest Space Invader of all time.

Throughout the gospels, again and again, Jesus’ beliefs get in people’s way. Whether confrontationally when he encounters the Pharisees, whom he publicly decries as hypocrites;  or lovingly when he stills Martha’s busyness, Jesus regularly gets in the way. The difference with my Space Invasion, though, is that, in Jesus’ case, people’s lives were regularly changed. So, what is the difference?

Jesus does it with care for the person in mind.

With some examples (like that of Martha) it is easy enough to see how he acts out of love. When he encounters the Samaritan woman at the well, he doesn’t shout at her and condemn her for her sins, but instead gently teaches her about a God who loves her greatly. Even with the Pharisees, his love for them is visible. When Jesus is on the cross, he cries out to God to forgive those who have put him there, including the Pharisees. In every confrontation and encounter Jesus deeply cares about the person whose space he is invading.

And this, I guess, is the key. If we do have to be space invaders for God, it is so much better to be the Jesus kind, the kind who works on deeply loving the person before they open their mouth. And to do that, we need to listen to them and care about what they are saying. That being said, it is a challenge to do so, something I can definitely say from experience as one who is still struggling to love a certain lady who gets in my way at the pool…