Communicating Christian Beliefs In Public Is Good. But It’s Also Complicated

In my day job, I’m a writer – someone whose job is to communicate ideas through words.

It’s not an easy gig. Sometimes, I think I’ve effectively portrayed an idea, and I may be pleased with what I’ve written.

But if I publish my work, my audience could misunderstand it or completely miss my point. Communication isn’t just throwing something into the wild blue yonder – it’s successfully conveying an idea, and it’s often to inspire some kind of response.

I spend a lot of time thinking about communication. And lately, I’ve been thinking about how we are communicating Christian beliefs in the public arena.

Sometimes, Christian beliefs can be shared publicly and celebrated for it, like Chris Pratt’s impassioned speech at the Teen Choice Awards.

Other times, Christians face scandal and controversy, like Israel Folau’s Instagram post or Cooper’s Keeping It Light commercial.

What I’ve noticed is that, each time we’ve seen backlash over Christians speaking truth in public, Christians seem to divide into two camps.

On one side, many Christians see the hostility as an inevitable response to Christian truth from a secular culture. They believe speaking our beliefs is worth whatever the cost – even confusion and backlash.

On the other side, there are Christians who are calling for care in how we communicate to others. This is less a call to declaw the gospel of its tougher messages. But it is about contextualising.

My question is – can’t we do both?

I believe that Christians should share their beliefs publicly, and should be allowed to do so.

But speaking the truth also requires thoughtfulness and sensitivity to the world we’re in, and how those words will be received. Otherwise, those words will fall on deaf ears of a culture we’re purportedly trying to influence.

When I’m communicating Christian beliefs in public, the fact is, there’s more to consider than just my good intentions.

Speaking is always done in a context.

Good communication matters. And if you don’t recognise who you’re speaking to, it can be fatal to that message actually being received – much less acted upon.

So what’s our context?

We’re in a post-Christian culture.

Your average joe won’t necessarily have the same frame of reference for Christian ideas as they may have had, say, fifty years ago. As Tim Keller put it,

Most Christian speaking and preaching still assumes that listeners have the [same] fundamental understandings of reality that they had in the past.

There’s a vibe that Christianity is just irrelevant.

We’re in a time when people see Christians as having dealt poorly with vulnerable people.

And this has hit the media in a big way. The Catholic child abuse scandal has broken, and there’s been ongoing discussion of how many LGBTI people who have faced pain and rejection from churches. We are portrayed as “gay-hating” and opposing the rights of women.

As Lance Lawton points out, these perceptions are so powerful that they’re often carrying people who otherwise don’t have any direct experience of Christianity. (In a post-Christian culture, these people are becoming more common.)

You can argue that this reception is inevitable, that Jesus tells us we will be misunderstood and hated. But the fact remains that many people will be carried by what culture tells them about Christianity.

And even if I have the best intentions, communicating Christian truth will have to reckon with this baggage. Sometimes, if my wording is especially poor, what I’m saying will be distorted and buried by these perceptions.

What’s tragic is that, sometimes, Christians can be tone-deaf to how they’re heard. And it’s a missed opportunity.

It can happen through sound bites that are clear to Christians, but that distort the gospel for a post-Christian West that doesn’t know the broader story.

We can neglect the opportunity to subvert the hateful stereotypes of Christianity – and instead reinforce them.

We can fail to think about what it means to “become like the Jews to win the Jews” in today’s world (1 Corinthians 9:20-22).

And afterwards, we can sit back and blame “the culture” for our poor reception: “Well, they just don’t understand us.”

Of course, sometimes that will be true. But sometimes, it’s not.

To me, it’s tragic when our own choices of how to communicate can obscure the actual gospel we’re trying to promote.

Christian beliefs are always the same. But how we share it publicly requires a wise missiological approach.

Our mission field is right here. And good missionaries will study the culture they are speaking into. They seek to contextualise the gospel through the audience’s own worldview, without losing the reality of the gospel. And they will have grace for the people they are speaking to.

Why, in a post-Christian culture, should we do any different?

I don’t believe in “watering down truth” to make our message more palatable.

But I do believe in communicating Christian beliefs in a way that’s in a posture of grace, and that’s wise about the context we’re in.

The heart of this isn’t to chase popularity, but to love our neighbour enough to try to understand them.

That’s not scolding them from our moral high horse or throwing shocking Bible verses into the ether to see what sticks. Instead, it’s walking alongside them and showing them a better way.

The argument of “How do you communicate Christianity?” shouldn’t be a question of speaking truth and not speaking truth.

It’s about how we can speak the truth of the gospel in a way that brings people closer to God.