REAL PEOPLE

Jesus said to His disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”  (John 13:34-35 NIV)

Christians in their relationships should be the most human people you will ever see.  This speaks for God in an age of inhumanity and impersonality and facelessness.  When people look at us, their reaction should be, "These are human people" -- human, because we know that we differ from the animal, the plant, and the machine; and that personality is native to what has always been [human].  If they cannot look upon us and say, "They are real people", nothing else is enough. 

Far too often, young people become Christians and then search among the Church's ranks for real people, and have a hard task finding them.  All too often, [Christians] are paper people.  If we do not preach these things, talk about them to each other, and teach them carefully from the pulpit and in the Christian classroom, we cannot expect Christians so to act.  This has always been important, but it is especially so today because we are surrounded by a world in which personality is increasingly eroded.  If we, who have become God's children, do not show Him to be personal in our lives, then in practice we are denying His existence, and He cannot be anything but grieved. 

-- Francis A. Schaeffer in “The God Who Is There”  [1968]

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