#355. Warning friends that your new friend is a non-Christian.

Have you ever warned your friends that another friend coming over isn’t a Christian? Probably not, but I have, because I’ve not always been very open minded. I think I do this because I often throw a Christian disclaimer on other things I engage with in my life.

For instance, the other day I wrote about a funny news video clip online I saw about a tiny dog that had barked for six years straight. I thought it was great the way the commentator said in all seriousness, “The dog broke the town’s previous record for continuous barking, which was eight minutes.” But the clip was on a comedy site that has a lot of crass stories on it too. So I did one of those Christian disclaimers where you say something like, “Yeah it’s not a Christian site, but some of the stuff isn’t filthy. But still, please make sure you stay away from the rest of it. I mean I don’t support the whole thing, just the part I mentioned.”

That’s a weird phenomenon, the Christian disclaimer, and I should probably spend some time thinking about what it means about my faith. But right now, I’m curious why we say something like that about people that aren’t Christians. I have three guesses:

1. Non Christians are loose cannons.
Sometimes people disclaim the arrival of a non Christian just in case they do something wild, like swear. But by disclaiming them it automatically creates a weird tension of us vs. them in the context of a dinner party. And honestly, have you ever not disclaimed someone and then had to go back later and say, “I’m so sorry about my friend Hucklebuck. Honestly, I had no idea he was just going to start punching people in the face. And I didn’t even know he carried a gun. I’ll help you pick out a new cat tomorrow. I should have warned you he’s a non-Christian.”

2. Our Christian friends might say something crazy.
Maybe we’re afraid that our Christian friends are going to say something really crazy in front of the girl from work that’s a non-Christian. You’ll all be eating dinner and then one of your friends will say, “Can you please pass the salt and did I tell you about the angel that spoke to me last night and helped me find a parking space at the mall today? My savior has a first name, it’s J-E-S-U-S!!” But chances are, if they’re real friends that you trust and care about, they won’t do something like this.

3. It’s witness time.
It could be that we think when our friends find out there’s a non-Christian in the room they’ll go into “witness mode.” Suddenly instead of acting normal and how they would every other moment of the day, they’ll start using all their fancy seminary words. They’ll start asking awkwardly intimate questions like “are you happy on the inside?” They’ll spend the whole night stuffing tracts into your non-Christian friend’s purse like squirrels before winter. Extreme examples? Perhaps, but I promise you it happens.

I don’t know how to fix this. It seems like there are a few overlapping issues in this post. I think the first thing is doing what we talked about in the dear seeker post and that’s changing the way we look at non-Christians. Retiring the label and seeing people as, well people. I would love to be the faith that doesn’t label or stereotype. Not in a lose your values, anything goes kind of way, but in an honest, “we’re people trying to love other people” kind of way.

Other new stuff from around the way:
1. Respect or ignore those that came before you? Yes – everything is replaceable.com
2. Run – 97secondswithGod.com
3. The lady in the corner – prodigaljon.com

Special thanks to Bill C. for today’s SCL idea.