PlayActing

Matthew 6: 1-4, The Message translation says:

“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.

When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself.

You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure – ‘playactors’ I call them – treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it – quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.”

I was raised to believe that if you went around telling people about the good stuff you do, it doesn’t count. It counted, until you went and told someone. Or made sure that they found out about the good you did. Because you were doing good stuff in God’s eyes, and he sees everything, and doesn’t need to be told.

My parents grew up dirt-poor in Mississippi, and have a heart for those who grow up without things most of us take for granted every day. They know the feeling of being without. My dad says it depends on how you look at it, because he always had a roof over his head and food on the table. Rich by most countries’ standards. He’s right.

My dad was a light, gas, and water man in Memphis, my hometown, and came home once telling us about a family, at a home where he’d had a call, where the kids were crying because they didn’t want to go to school shoeless anymore. My mom said, let’s take them some things. So she boxed up a big box of shoes and clothes and miscellaneous things (we always had extra, but were not “rich” – in American terms); and my dad drove us back to the house that night, where my mom went to the door and delivered the goods to the family. The mother cried “Thank Yous” and wondered how we knew about their need, but my mom refused to tell, and just said something like, “Don’t you worry about that. It’s a gift, you have a nice day now.” And we left.

My mom told me that she didn’t feel like it counted if you told everybody about all the good things you do, or wanted credit every time. That lesson sticks with me to this day!

(I can tell you this one, because it was my mom’s good deed, not mine.)

I’m blogging about this, because, it seems to me, in Christian-land in America, the popular Christian celebrities and icons are the same as the popular “secular” celebrities – they are the ones telling you all about almost everything they do. Especially the good works – because that makes them better Christians in the eyes of their constituency. So, it’s good marketing. It’s a tough nut to crack – modesty v. PR.  Humility v. PlayActing. What is the difference between “them” and “us”? Should we apologize for aggressive marketing of great programs and good deeds? Is it self-serving or is it just smart business?

How do we reconcile the humility of Christ with the way things are done in 21st Century America in his name?