Strangers.
(Below are the key ideas from the 15 minute talk I gave @ the WhiteBoard Sessions this morning. These notes are being written while I am on a plane to Dallas and have not been edited.)
For the past 20 years or so a huge trend has developed encouraging people to share their favorite ideas with their friends. Be it your faith or your favorite cause, dozens of books have been written on how we can and should focus on sharing what we love with the people we love.
I’m all for that actually. Do that.
But I see 2 problems with over-reliance on this strategy and I want to tell you why I think we should focus less on our friends and more on complete strangers as we share our passions.
1. You don’t have a ton of friends.
2. It is very likely that your friends/family already share your passions or beliefs.
It takes real guts to tell a stranger about something you strongly believe in. In fact, we rarely do it. RARELY! Out of fear of offending someone or coming off as creepy, most Christians would come close to vomiting if, on the spot, you asked them to go and share their faith story with strangers.
Most of us, in some type of way, don’t like that kids are starving around the world and that people are forced to drink dirty water. But our dislike is passive. Our convictions are fleeting. We don’t like it, but we don’t dislike it enough to honestly change the game. Here’s why:
The Conviction/Action Quotient
Convictions > Fears = Action
Let me explain…
Parents/Caregivers: Have you ever been out shopping with your children, momentarily take your eyes off of them, turn around, and they have disappeared? I have! Terrifying! They may be hiding in the clothes rack or looking at toys somewhere, but your mind begins to go somewhere awful.
Internally, a switch is flipped. Even if you are a quiet, socially awkward introvert, you will begin asking strangers if they have seen your child. Even though it’s weird, you will yell out your child’s name with the hopes that they will hear you.
In that moment your convictions (that which you truly believe and hold dear) for your child are greater than your fears of interacting with strangers and making a fool of yourself so you will act like a complete lunatic for that which you believe in. Seeing that you are a “normal-looking” person, strangers may feel compelled to help you. Employees will change their plans.
Could you imagine the opposite story?
Your child wanders off…
You have a fear of speaking to strangers and public speaking seriously gives you the heeby jeebies. You just can’t bring yourself to overcome these fears. You love little Johnny, but… you… just… can’t… muster… up… the… guts to yell his name! Frozen in fear, you instead decide to keep shopping and hope that it all works out for your young son 🙂
Preposterous? Kind of.
That’s what we all do, however, when we learn that today a child (hundreds actually) will literally die of hunger and, instead of yelling and screaming for help we keep shopping and hope that it’ll all work out. In this case our convictions simply aren’t strong enough to risk making a fool of ourselves for the cause.
We cringe when we learn that little girls are being sold for sex throughout Atlanta, but few of us cringe ourselves into enough conviction that we actually do something about it.
We say that we don’t know what to do, but what we really mean is that we don’t care enough to find out what to do. We don’t care enough to simply experiment, throw a solution at the wall, and see what sticks.
If my child is lost in a store, I’m not worried about whether or not I have taken a 3 hour course on missing children, I’m just going to scream and search until I find my baby.
The same is true for our faith…
Penn Jillette, the entertainer and well known atheist, rocked me to my core years ago when he asked the question, “How much does a Christian have to hate you to believe that a literal heaven and hell exist and never tell you about it?”
I understand exactly what he is saying! If Jesus is real, how ridiculous do we look treating this like a secret between friends and family? If world hunger is real, how fat are we to keep on eating like we eat? If girls are really being bought and sold like property in our own towns, what does our inaction say about us?
For the past 2.5 years, through about a dozen different initiatives, I have lead teams that have raised millions of dollars for strangers in need. Most of the donors have been strangers and a huge percentage of them were not Christians. For me, this is the Jesus thing to do….
- Many scholars suggest that some of the initial disciples were virtually strangers to Jesus. Could you imagine a complete stranger walking up to you, asking you to leave your job, and follow him?
- Jesus intervened for a woman that was seconds away from being stoned to death. Literally, people had rocks in hand and Jesus stood next to her, a stranger it appears, and dared the sinless person to throw the first stone.
- Almost every person healed by Jesus, fed by Jesus, taught by Jesus was a stranger to him.
Hear my heart…have friends! Cherish them. Love them. But know that the world is full of billions of strangers that might join your cause if you asked and even more that are waiting on a stranger like you to help make their world a better place.
Convictions >Fears = Action!
