Peace should permeate our church communications

Today an ugly, vicious tone of public discourse has entered our world. Though each person is ultimately accountable to his or her Lord, I humbly believe from my study of scripture that there is no excuse for people who call themselves followers of Jesus to blast every foe or perceived political offense with slanderous, true or untrue, angry tirades. I do not see anywhere in the Bible were there are exceptions to these verses:

"Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay, ' says the Lord.  On the contrary: 'If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.' "(Romans 12: 17-21).

"Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king" (1 Peter 2:16-17).

We were taught as children that we could disagree without being disagreeable. We would do well to remember that advice as adults.

An attitude of kindness in communications won't always be appreciated

When I tried, gently I hoped, to challenge someone who was making some rather strong, nasty statements about a church situation and those in authority, he responded angrily that Moses talked like that to people, so he had every right to do that.

"Maybe so," was my reply, "but you aren't Moses."

If we haven't been commissioned by God out of burning bush to deliver a message, we need to be careful that our tone does not exceed our authority.

You will speak in response to the voices you hear—be listening to the right ones

Whether we intend to or not, we all naturally mimic the voices we listen to the most. If you spend your time listening to angry talk radio, television, and reading inflammatory or snarky blogs and editorials, you may, without thinking, assume this is the way to communicate.

Because the human heart is so naturally attracted to what is self-serving and so easily deceived, as Christian communicators we need to take extra care that the primary voice filling our hearts and minds is the Word of God. The public reputation, air time, or title of national celebrities matters little if their words do not reflect the words, tones, and attitudes of the Bible. This does not mean that a person can quote a verse out of context (as is frequently done) and that quoting that verse means they speak for God. Remember the devil can quote scripture and twist it for his purposes. When this happens, as it did to Jesus in Matthew 4, we should respond with the proper, peaceful, appropriate words of God.

Snarky, profane, and cynical is the default mode of secular communications, not Christ's followers

This is not easy to refrain from being snarky, profane, and cynical.

This challenge is more than theory to me. I personally struggle greatly with it. I grew up the daughter of a WW2, drill-sergeant, career military father, whose language was colorful, to say the least, and often critical.  Like most kids, I naturally talk like my father, and it is a constant challenge to make my speech and communications reflect my heavenly Father rather than my earthly father. But that is what they must be if I am to communicate for Jesus.

Whether part of our upbringing or not, it is easy to reflect the cynical, critical, superior tone of contemporary secular communications. That is the default tone of our sinful nature. To pick apart, to find fault, and to laugh the superior laugh of those in the know as opposed to those who create church communications that don't please our refined taste, can be delicious fun, especially if we can share it with like-minded cynical souls.

To carry that attitude into our church communications, to reflect the flippant, irreverent attitudes of the secular world in our communications then becomes the goal.

Thinking we have to communicate like the world to communicate to the world seems to be the savvy thing to do—but it isn't

In addition, it isn't a successful way to share our faith. When the church mocks itself, it doesn't draw people to Jesus. It gives people outside the church permission to mock the church and our Lord. It is extraordinarily, spiritually dangerous to model to those outside the church that it is acceptable to mock the King of Kings and Lord of Lords before whom we will all bow. I worry that

those who do this, do not have a correct view of the Savior that their church says they are sharing. We all need a renewed vision of the majesty and glory of the God we serve, if we want to correctly communicate His message. We aren't alone in this need. Isaiah the Old Testament communicated as a spokesman for God to the Jewish people, for a number of years, when he had a new vision of the God he represented:

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim,. . . And they were calling to one another:

 "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"

 And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" (Isaiah 6:1-8).

We all need to pray for a vision of our holy God. We need to pray that we will have a correct perception of his majesty, purity and power. When we get a glimpse of that, we need to repent where we have fallen short in representing Him. We need to pray that we will learn from Jesus, around whom sinners were comfortable and who was a welcome host at parties, but when he asked, "Who can accuse me of sin?" no one could answer. We need to pray that we will always do our communications in light of an audience of One—our Lord Jesus and with our eyes on him receive the wisdom for how to communicate his love for the world he died to save.