Miss-Communication

Lessons from the Aware non-saga

Sunday, May. 10, 2009 Posted: 6:42:25PM HKT

It has blown over.

It blew up, though not by any choice of the Church.

Now that the dust has begun to settle, what are some of the lessons one can glean from the Aware non-saga? (It is one, in every sense of the term, except a fictional sense)

An important dimension of the Church-society relationship that was revealed in the whole episode was the lack of understanding between the two sides.

Case in point: ‘new guard’ president Ms Josie Lau, who claimed to be an ordinary person, had been made out to be the leader of coup de tat by aggressive fundamentalists.

Another case: The Christian Post (Singapore), which at no point harboured any ill intention against the Republic of Singapore and never will, has been quickly made out to be a seditious publication with an “agenda of trying to split [the] nation into 2 camps, the fundamentalist Christian camp and the ‘Secular’ camp consisting of the rest of the nation”, according to an online weblog.

A concerned reader indicated that he or she would like to file a police report on the “seditious nature of the article”.

[For more information, find the editorial titled The Offence of the Offense in the CPS archives.]

The ultimate reason for any misunderstanding is always ignorance and this is always due to a lack of effective communication.

Some thoughts on the reasons for and results of the non-Christian public’s misunderstanding of Christianity are as follow:

Different Value Systems

It is clear that not everyone thinks that the Christian faith is the greatest thing that has ever happened in the world.

For most people it could be earning the first million dollars. For some it could be attaining success in the workplace. For others it could be finding one’s true love and setting up a good family. Still others might consider it bliss to live life to the fullest by getting a firsthand experience of the thrills and spills that the world has to offer. Some people might want to excel in what they do best. Others could be longing for a world in which there is human rights and justice.

Regardless of what the pursuit, the world has many people with many different life goals. Even within the visible Church, not everyone seeks God’s pleasure.

That being the case, Christianity could tend to be an oddity at best and an interference at worst. As long as not everyone agrees that the grace that has been shown through Jesus Christ is the greatest – in fact, categorically supreme – life goal, the slightest attempt on the part of Christians to persuade unbelievers of the goodness of the Gospel will always be nothing more than an annoyance.

A nugget of thought for both groups: Non-Christians should understand that mainstream Christianity and Christians are simply trying to offer them what is better – no, in fact, what is best and incomparable to anything they might presently possess. Christians, on their part, should acknowledge that a world that cannot see that Christ is matchless is really in a most pitiable state and most of the time helpless and unable to be helped by the most sincere efforts of the believers.

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The Christian Post (Singapore)