The Center Flame

One of my favorite pass times is cooking on my grill.  I’m not especially good at it, but I’ll keep trying.  My grill of several years has been slowly needing replacement parts.  From heart dividers to o-rings, I’ve put a bit of money into maintaining the system.  It’s ok, none of the parts or pieces to date have been that expensive.

However, I noticed today that in the center of the grill there is now a very high, very intense flame.  That centralized flame forces me to move the steaks and hamburgers around the flame and forces me to keep them away from the center.

Upon further evaluation, I found that one of the channels that host the gas, has rusted through in the middle.  Therefore the intense flame is a result of a broken system.  A high concentration of gas has drawn from the rest of the system making it imbalanced and not heating the grill equally.

Systematic Approach to Heating

As I pondered this it showed an obvious allegory or what I think is problematic system of evangelism in the post-modern world.  See, in order to properly cook the meat I have to have a constant flame at a moderate temperature.  If I were to leave the meat too far from the flame it will never cook.  Sure it’ll be exposed to the heat, but not sufficiently enough to thoroughly cook the steak and get it to a point that it’s tasteful and useful.  Transversely, if I were to put the steak directly on the intense flame, the steak only burns on the outside, leaving the inside uncooked, distasteful, scorched , a waste of the heating system’s efforts and a wasted opportunity.

Failing Flame

Often times when Christians try to share their heart to an Outsider, their flame is too high.  The intensity is a result of something broken in our heating mechanism.  What’s broken varies for Believers.  I feel that often it’s a lack of a pre-established relationship, a desire to “win-over” someone through our own efforts instead of letting Christ work or a lack of patience to keep the heat low and constant to ensure that we influence a well done approach.

Saving people is up to Christ.  He provides the opportunities and the desire in the Outsider to heed His call.  Often times having a balance in our heating system – with all parts working well -do I create the opportunity and environment to witness.  If my flame is too high, such as being so religious that I simply burn people without gradually warming them from the inside, I become irrelevant.  My religious element maybe high and it’s taking away from the other heating elements, such as personal relationship, humor, intellect, etc…  I don’t wish to be misunderstood here.  My Faith is foremost.  It’s what propels me to live as I live, I want people to see me as differently.  But I don’t want the “religious” effects (being seen as self righteous, legalistic or hypocritical) to overshadow a balanced life.

There are a lot of Christians who overwhelm Outsiders with scriptures, judgmental attitudes and a desire to dictate their actions.  They sometimes lack the lifestyle that compels Outsiders to ask what’s different.  We loose relevance in other peoples lives when we’re too on-fire and we tend to burn them.

I pray that I am a constant balanced Christian that doesn’t burn those around me in order to be a small part of the systematic approach of the gospel that creates a useful and tasteful member of the faith.

“Col. 4:6 – Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Tags: bible, christian, evangalism, lifestyle, relational, witnessing