As a dedicated and experienced introvert, I was somewhat surprised to find myself a few days back trying to sell free movie tickets on the steps of my local theatre. The long of the short is that it was a near utter flop. People either thought that I and my friend we worthless bums, or we were selling even more worthless product. All this despite the fact that the coupons we held in our sweaty hands were quite real. We were selling these cereal movie tickets for 5 bucks. The regular ticket price was 12 dollars and 50 cents ...plus tax. 5 dollars is a Good deal right? That’s what WE thought! Nope.
Now coming from the farm and a rather smallish community I have always been used to being believed. Even as a kid I was always believed. And as a result (or maybe it was the converse) I have always held the truth in a high regard. Thus I assumed – wrongly it turned out – that everybody had this assumption. I mean sure, there are shysters out there, but generally they have beady eyes or are dressed very poorly and don’t at all smell that nice. But now here I was being treated like a cheat! I was horribly embarrassed at first, then surprised and then finally very angry. Most of the people assumed that my product was bilge. (keep in mind that I had nice clothes on and even smelled good! I have heard all about first impression.)
After leaving the theatre parking lot with none of the counted on grocery money (you see my friend and I even had good intentions for our profits), I began to consider how most people view the offer of free stuff, let alone 57% percent off movie tickets. Pretty badly indeed. So what does an average person think of the Christian claim of free salvation, free peace, free grace (and depending on your doctrine, healing) etc? At least I actually held a little piece of cardboard in my hand that said free movie ticket. All that ‘free’ stuff that Christians offer, often times doesn’t even have that. And it hasn’t helped that many voices in our culture – think Hitchens, Dawkins etc – are telling everyone that we are trying to sell something that is a lot of rot. It suddenly dawned on me that just because we have something that is absolutely wonderful – beyond good even – does not necessarily mean that everybody will just take our good word for it. For them to believe us, shouldn’t we have some of the fruits that we so loudly proclaim are part of the package? The Amplified version says it well in1 Peter 2:9: that we are to“...set forth the wonderful deeds and display the virtues and perfections of Him Who called [us].” I guess shiny cardboard lettering isn’t enough. We have to have some proof.
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