Part 4 - Your actions are speaking so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying

Translation means making sense of words that I understand for others who don't understand. Generally we speak of translation as going from one language to another. In learning to "speak" Christian to a world that doesn't understand it, the highest principle of translation is pointing to Christ and giving our words a context that makes their meaning totally understandable.

The problem is that I know not of what I speak.

Honestly, "Christianese" has become such a part of our Christian subculture that when we talk about grace, forgiveness, hearing the Lord, salvation, holiness... we're talking about what we don't really understand. By "really understand" I mean practically understand. That's why we don't make much sense to the world around us. We're talking about things we don't know.

I'm a language guy. If I were to go sit in a doctoral level math class of some sort, I would be able to take notes and pick up some words. I could probably then go to a dictionary somewhere and find definitions of those words and know their meanings. But it would take about 11 seconds in conversation for someone to realize that I don't know what in the world I'm talking about.

That's where we as Christians lose our credibility. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who is trying to use words they don't really know? They'll toss in a nice $5 word, but they use it in an awkward way? Or when you talk to someone about baseball and they say something that let's you know they're really stretching? What's your first thought? You may not write them off or dismiss them totally, but you certainly wonder why it is that they're going out on a limb to sound like they know what they obviously don't.

There's no greater thing that needs faithful translation that issues of faith. There are no more important words that we could convey than grace, community, salvation, hope. The problem is that we've talked and even shouted these words with such reckless fury without making sure that we know what we're talking about. If we want to be faithful translators of grace... we must first be people of grace.

But none of that will become possible until I'm willing to first own up to the fact that there's a disconnect in what I say and what I am. Until my life is integrated, and salvation means that I've truly been saved from the things that are killing me, when I talk about it to someone else, they won't get it. The stories of people who have tried God and found Him wanting is an indictment not on God, but on my failure to embrace Him fully. I quote Galatians 2:20 about being crucified with Christ before going to the cross. So those outside the Church misunderstand what God asks of us.

We gather in communities which are scripturally mandated to bear one anothers burdens, and we divide along understandings of gifts and inspiration and the fate of those whose lives fail to bear fruit, and we point at the other camps and call them wrong. Then we "witness" to people about God's desire to bring them into families and place them in community when they see our communities as weekday programs where we gather with people who dress the same and talk the same and make the same income as we do. We talk about the mission in the context of weekend trips that make us feel like we've played our part in the game, but we don't turn off our phones so that we don't miss the opportunity to take another step on the ladder ever upward.

I'm also always aware of the plank in my own eye. It's funny that my job... and by that I mean my source of income... is to build communities for the sake of spiritual formation. Yet I am feeling the pangs of brokenness because I know not of what I speak.

I think I need to stop talking about translating for a minute... and starting understanding the things that I'm hoping to convey. Maybe then I won't have to say anything. I believe in the Church. More precisely, I believe in the Spirit which quickens the Church. I don't hope for perfection in the Body, because then I couldn't be a part of it. But I do hope for integrity. I hope for the gentle gradual clensing of the cultural muck and grime that I've picked up as part of a global organization that's sometimes political and sometimes ethical but always portraying something about the God that's called me out of where I was and into something beautiful.

My mandate to translate is as strong today as it was on the day that God captured me. But it has to begin by embodying the message that won my heart. On the day that God woke me up, I didn't need to hear about Grace. I was in the middle of it. May my translation begin by first taking up the towel and washing the feet of those around me.

Chapter 5 - Then should we be silent?