We’re being watched.

I ran into two quotes that are bothering me. One I found yesterday at Roman Catholic Cop’s blog. (Visit this site for Jamie’s reflection about this passage.) It’s a quote from Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi:

I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Basically, Gandhi is saying that our behavior doesn’t look like what he expected of a follower of Christ. When I read that quotation, it reminded me of another, a thought from Friedrich Nietzche:

Maybe I would have believed in a Redeemer if the Christians had looked more redeemed.

Gandhi, of course, was not Christian. Nietzche had been raised as a Lutheran, attended a prominent Protestant boarding school, studied theology at the University of Bonn, and became disillusioned with Christianity. So here we have two men from very different backgrounds – one practicing the Hindu faith throughout his life, the other a fallen-away Christian – both of whom object to Christianity on the basis of the behavior, actions, and appearance of Christians.

According to New Advent, hypocrisy is ”the pretension to qualities which one does not possess… or the putting forward of a false appearance of virtue or religion. Essentially its malice is identical with that of lying; in both cases there is discordance between what a man has in his mind and the simultaneous manifestation of himself”.

It’s so easy to delude ourselves, to think we’re living as Christians when in fact our behavior says otherwise to those around us. When we identify ourselves as followers of Jesus, we take on a tremendous responsibility. People will be watching us. We can’t just say we’re following Him. We must start doing so.

I’m not implying that we’ll follow Him without fumbling. Of course we’ll stumble and fall. But those who are watching us will pick up on the slightest bit of arrogance, defensiveness, or self-righteousness. And those who are watching are far more likely to respond favorably towards Christianity if they see us rise up with humility and set off once more toward Jesus.

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