Please Return To Your Seat
... and fasten your seatbelt.
A View -
How was your flight?
Strange things happen on flights. Not often and not usually - but sometimes the only answer to “How was your flight?” is “Well … it was strange.” Here is an example -
This newsletter doesn’t assume that you, dear reader, are a person of faith, much less a person of the Christian faith. But I know, at this (ground floor) stage (in what will eventually be a media powerhouse) - I think many of you are Christian. This week’s dispatch of The Embassy (which is about the intersection of faith and culture - hopefully, the gracious intersection of faith and culture) will take a look at this nineteen seconds of social media and use it to address Christians (mostly). Others will, I hope, also find something here to ponder. I am hoping to find a gracious way to say to Christian readers “don’t do this”, not because we should hide our faith - but because we should present it in the most gracious and loving and wise way possible to the world around us.
I want to start by saying that people come to faith by grace - all methods are imperfect and I am imperfect - and I want to have grace for imperfect methods and imperfect people. It is easy to criticize. (If you doubt that, simply check out the comments to the above post.) That said, we need to talk about singing on a plane. Let’s start with some questions.
Who is this for?
As you may have noticed, the people on the plane have various reactions to a bunch of Christians, traveling as a group, singing a worship song on a crowded flight. I am particularly interested in the man in the blue check shirt sitting close to the guitar playing worshipper. He doesn’t seem impressed. Or pleased.
I’m not sure what the intended message was - but I don’t think it is reaching this guy. I am not sure what the hoped for response was - but I don’t think this is it. Some Christians may reply - the intended message was that God is great and that we should worship him. I think both of those statements are true. But without thinking of how the people we are actually communicating with are going to experience that message - we may be sending a fairly different message - one we don’t intend to send. You may write your own caption for blue shirt guy. But I don’t think it is what was hoped for by the worshippers.
Except I might suggest that I don’t know if the worshippers had a hoped for response from non-Christians on that plane. I would suggest that if their response was considered, the worshippers may have chosen a different course of action. I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but it seems - from nineteen seconds, I understand - that they were their own intended audience. Or that they had no thought of an intended audience or how that audience would experience this worship.
The Fast and The Furious Twenty-Seven - More Car Chases and Stuff
Have you ever sat near someone on a plane who watched a movie on their laptop at full volume because their ear buds weren’t working? I haven’t either. Who would do that? Who would subject everyone around them, people who wanted to quietly read or - heaven forbid - sleep, to Fast and Furious Twenty-Seven - More Car Chases and Stuff? “But this is better than that!” I don’t suspect it is better in the opinion of blue shirt guy. It might be worse, might be about the same - probably not a lot better. It wasn’t better to @davenewworld_2 who posted the video with the caption, “imagine you get on a plane and you have to listen to this”.
Believe it or not, I was near that guy (not actually that guy, you understand) on a flight back from a Christian event maybe 20 years ago. A bunch of Christians started singing a hymn on a similarly crowded flight. The guy across the aisle from me, who had noticed I was reading an article from a Christian magazine earlier, looked at me with extreme puzzlement and some irritation. I shrugged and apologized to him and hoped it would stop soon. And it did.
So my question is for the worshippers - who is this for? If you think it is for blue shirt guy - for his benefit - for his salvation, even … I don’t think blue shirt guy or davenewworld_2 see it that way.
The trick - and it is more than a trick, it is the work of many years or in some cases a lifetime - is to present or display or manifest some true expression of the grace and the truth of Christianity in such a way that the other person understands that it is at least intended for their benefit. That it is with them in mind, actually them - not a generic listener. People who we have worked to understand, care for, pray for perhaps - and who, because of how we approach this grace and truth actually will hear the message. If they don’t respond, all we can do is continue to engage, love, pray, care. That is our part - that is what faithfulness is for us as Christians. Understanding this strange world and the people in it and how that interacts with faith is what The Embassy is all about.
The Truth on the Ground
I would guess that these worshippers, if they had been sitting around a living room talking, would express some level of understanding about how Christians are often viewed by the general public (by which I mean the people in our neighborhoods, workplaces, classrooms … flights).
We are often viewed through the lens of divisive political positions. We are often viewed through the lens of what we are against. It is necessary to be against things, everyone probably is. It isn’t wise to be known only by the things you are against - especially if our task is to express the things we are for. Some expressions of these characterizations may not be accurate or fair - but some are. And they are understandable (to me) based on social media accounts of many Christians I know. I don’t think this should be the case - but that isn’t my point. My point is, fair or not, accurate or not, rightly or wrongly - this is how Christians in America are seen by many. And to proceed as if this isn’t the case will produce a world of blue shirt guy reactions (at best). If they understood all this from their living room - they forgot it when it came to reaching other people.
The truth on the ground (among the people Christians are called to display the light and love of Christ and the unity of the church and the fruit of transformed lives) is that Christians aren’t known for those things - as a group. An individual Christian might be - by God’s grace, each Christian can be that for somebody or a small number of somebodies. But as a group - probably not. Why that is so could fill many dispatches from The Embassy - my point here is just to observe this truth. And to observe that we Christians should act in the knowledge of this truth.
If I Can’t Sing on a Plane, What Can I Do?
Here is a biblical illustration of how to answer that question. I visited this in the first edition of this newsletter - partly because it is where the name of this newsletter comes from. One of the writers of the New Testament, the apostle Paul, calls Christians ambassadors. The biblical reference is from the book of Second Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 20:
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
Let’s unpack that and we will hope to find a biblical reason against airline singing and perhaps some guidelines toward a more effective approach that is faithful to the message. What is an ambassador? Imagine yourself an ambassador to Sweden or Italy or Malawi or Malaysia. What is your job and how would you hope to succeed?
First, you represent your home country - your home kingdom. You would have to know and embody the rules and habits and values and hopes and dreams of the home kingdom. So you will have to spend some time growing stronger in this knowledge and in this expression - so that you truly are a faithful expression of the home kingdom. In Paul’s message, that means that we Christians have to be a faithful, gracious, true, and compelling representation of our home kingdom. People should, by interacting with us, have some true sense of that home kingdom. We are ambassadors from the home kingdom - so we have to embody and represent it well.
Second, we represent our home kingdom in a new land. The ambassador has to do both. It has to represent the truths and ways and interests of the homeland - in a way that will be accurately seen and heard and understood in the new land. The land we are called to be ambassadors to. That means learning the ways of the new land, understanding the hopes and fears and outrages of this new land - so we can bring the truth of the old kingdom to it faithfully - so it will be heard. We have to work to lovingly understand the truth on the ground. We have to adapt the message of the kingdom, the grace and love and truth of Christianity so that those on the ground will hear it. If they reject it after it has been accurately and lovingly and graciously expressed and understood - then the message of Christianity has been rejected. We have succeeded in not offending them with anything before we get to that point.
I am, graciously I hope, suggesting that this work wasn’t done before the singing began on the plane. Given the setting, how could it have been?
I know, this work is hard. It demands my slow personal transformation by the grace of God and the practices of the church. A transformation that should lead to a more loving, gracious, and wise conduit of the truths of God’s kingdom - that should lead to a more effective ambassador of God’s message. It demands that I understand the culture I am in so I can live in it faithfully - by avoiding outrage and divisiveness and Phariseeism that can often characterize the culture (in the church as well as outside it).
It is a work I am not up to, honestly. I need help - and this is where a lifetime of uneven and imperfect Christian practices are, over time, used by God to change me - little by little. I want to end by saying that people come to faith by grace - all methods are imperfect and I am imperfect - and I want to have grace for imperfect methods and imperfect people. But also that how we express our faith matters to us and to the world we are living in. So don’t sing on planes. Return to your seat. And I don’t do this, but I should - see if the person next to you wants to have a conversation.
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