OBSCENE GESTURE
Don’t forget about the Family Fun Fest tonight! See you, with our lawn chairs, at 6:00 PM.
Back in the 1990s I went on a missions trip to Manaus, Brazil. We were dedicating a church that New Hope had helped to finance. This new church building was a church plant from a large inner city Presbyterian Church in that city. On Sunday morning, we attended that larger church, where I was asked to share a testimony and Kim Tracy, from Defiance, Ohio, was to share a song on his guitar. Just prior to the service, with the sanctuary pretty full, Kim got up to do a sound check.
When the monitor volume was OK, Kim looped his index finger and thumb together to signal “OK”. He did that several times, until the pastor came over to him and said, “Don’t do that. In our culture that’s an obscene gesture”. He had no idea he was giving such a gesture to the entire congregation. That was like lifting his middle finger to a crowd of several hundred people.
We all got a good chuckle out of it, but the pastor and Kim Tracy were not amused. He was mortified.
There are things that are culturally acceptable one place, but unacceptable in another. If we’re going to speak to sinners about the grace of God, we must do so in terms they find acceptable from their cultural perspective. It just doesn’t warm people’s hearts when we condemn their sin. What warms their hearts is when they know they have failed, yet we accept them anyway because of Christ.
People want acceptance, not condemnation. Go win someone over with love.
Tags: acceptance, love
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