This column was originally printed in August, 1994. However, I’m sure any one of you can point to more recent incidents that reflect the same kinds of things.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING

Within the last couple of months, I’ve read or heard of the following incidents:

• Actress Nell Carter commented to an interviewer that when she was hospitalized, her visitors included Sally Jesse Raphael and Carol Burnett. None of her “Christian” friends, however, came to see her.
• Two lesbians who settled in a small Georgia town and founded a “retreat” for other lesbians about a year ago have been subjected to extremely obscene phone calls and death threats from as-yet unknown sources. What is known is that the fundamentalist Christians in the town are violently opposed to them.
• A former Christian friend of mine from college has gone through some hard times recently. This has included a prison sentence. So far, none of the people from his church have been to visit him.

Hypocrisy has always disturbed me. It’s especially frustrating that I’m not immune to it myself. I know, from experience, how hard it is for us to make time to help a Christian brother or sister or a non-Christian friend or to express love to those with whom we have extreme philosophical, political or spiritual differences. I also know how hard it is to overcome our own emotions – our fears, prejudices, disappointments, shyness, or embarrassment. It’s not easy to try to comfort someone who’s lost a friend or family member to death, especially by suicide or violence. It’s not easy to visit someone who’s terminally ill, especially with a disease like AIDS. It’s not easy to express love to someone who’s suffering the consequences of their own sin. It’s especially not easy to express love to someone who’s in sin and doesn’t seem to care, or even flaunts it. Yet, as Christians, we’re not always called to do the easy stuff.

What we are called to do is be ambassadors of Christ through whom God makes His appeal to a perishing world (2 Corinthians 5:20). Webster defines “ambassador” as the “highest ranking representative from one government to another”. We have authority and responsibility even above that of angels when it comes to bring the world into reconciliation with God, whether that would be non-Christians, or brothers and sisters out of perfect fellowship with Him. We are quite possibly the only representatives of God that others will ever meet this side of eternity. And as we act on behalf of God, God and His kingdom are judged according to our actions – just as a foreign nation, its people, beliefs and customs, are judged according to the actions of the ambassador. And many a nation has been brought to the brink of war by a foolish or thoughtless ambassador.

This is an awesome obligation, and one with potentially far-reaching consequences. It is, for example, the concept behind original sin (i.e., our innate, in-born, “natural” sinfulness). Adam was the ambassador or representative of the entire human race. What he did and said would be the basis upon which all of future humanity would be judged. Thus when he sinned, he took all of us down with him. It is, likewise, the concept behind universal atonement. Christ, the “second Adam” or second ambassador of the human race (cf. Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15), through His obedience, restored the way to complete fellowship with God for all of humanity.

In much the same way, we are God’s ambassadors to each other, albeit with less power than Jesus had. (Understanding this, incidentally, can help a great deal in understanding Psalm 86:6 and John 10:34, where we, in our humanness, are called “gods”.) We are charged with representing Him, and it’s a job from which we may never truly take a vacation. As I’ve stated already, this carries with it some humbling responsibility. However, it also carries incredible blessings and benefits, not the least of which is actually having an active and essential part in carrying out God’s will on earth. Because we are constantly God’s ambassadors, yet without His omniscience, we can’t possibly know in what subtle way a person’s life might be brought a little closer to God by a brief smile from us, a single word at just the right time, or a simple deed that we did without really paying attention to it ourselves. We also can’t know what harm might be done by a scowl, a harsh word spoken in haste, or a deed done in our flesh.

Back in the 1960s, demonstrators often chanted, “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!” By this, they warned that their opponents would be judged by the rest of the world according to their deeds, and especially by their reaction to the demonstrators. That same cry echoes in the ears of Christians all over the world. No, we’re not required to live our lives on the nervous edges of our seats, always afraid of what they might be thinking of us. In fact, if we live our lives in fear of the opinions of others, we’re far more likely to disobey God. We are, however, required to always be aware of how we present Christ to the world. We can’t do this with perfection; we’re still human, with all our human failings and frailties. Forgiveness and restoration are and will always be available to us. But if we’re in constant fellowship with God through Bible reading and study and daily prayer, and in constant fellowship with other Christians we trust through regular church and small group meetings and the simple acts of every day friendship, we’ll be less likely to be knocked out by those failings and frailties.

The whole world is watching. If it sees us doing what’s right in God’s eyes, and still chooses to persecute us, then we’re promised that God will see it and reward and vindicate us. But if we’re allowing our own flesh to interfere, if we’re allowing ourselves to misrepresent God, if we’re failing to be proper ambassadors of our King, what we reap – here and hereafter – is only what we deserve.

The whole world is watching. What are they seeing?