I Hope This Doesn’t Offend You
Story time! I wrote this on May 4th.
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I was on the air on our gospel station with Brother Dustin Bonham (the pastor of Lighthouse Baptist Church) this morning, and we were talking about how today is Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Be with You).
I asked him, "Are you one of those preachers that thinks God has a sense of humor?"
He replied, "Yes, absolutely."
I said, "wouldn't it be cool on a May 4th that fell on a Sunday if God would give preachers the force? Since the force was a religion in Star Wars."
"That would be funny," he replied.
I talked about how you could use it to grab your Bible from the other side of the church and tell the congregation to flip to Kings, while you did it with your newly acquired power. I told him that it would probably win people over for Christ, meaning non-believers.
Some lady called in furious.
Let me start by saying I get that things can be taken differently depending on who processes it and hears it. Okay. It happens to all of us.
She says, "I can't believe you are comparing the King of Kings to Star Wars. How dare you compare our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to Star Wars. I'm never listening to this station again."
First off, there was no comparison. Webster's defines "compare" as: to say that (something) is similar to something else, or to look at (two or more things) closely in order to see what is similar or different about them or in order to decide which one is better, or to be as good or as bad as something else: to be on the same level or in the same category as something else.
Nowhere in this conversation did we liken the similarities of the force to Jesus Christ, except to say that the force is a religion in Star Wars.
Secondly, is that really all it takes to get you to stop listening to a radio station? Do you watch tv? I see commercials on popular stations like TBS, ESPN, CBS etc. that sometimes contain content that I don't want to see. There is a show RIGHT NOW on Fox called Lucifer! And maybe you're boycotting Fox, too. I don't know.
Thirdly, and this is a lesson for everyone, take a deep breath before you call in and snap someone's head off. If you want to criticize, call and be constructive about it. If you took it as we were comparing Star Wars to Jesus, tell us you took it that way and let us offer an apology and assure you that that wasn't our intention, so we can tell you that we hope you can keep listening in the future.
Listen, I'm friends with a lot of people that won't sniff Christianity, and I'm telling you, phone calls like this are one of the major reasons why. They see Christians get all bent out of shape and offended and turn hateful, instead of calmly going about trying to explain their side of the story. It turns people off. Stop it. Jesus preached love, not hate or hatefulness. Stop getting offended and offer a spiritual conversation instead.
And, hey, we're all human. We all have our moments. I don't know who called us to tell us that they would never listen again, and I don't want to know. I would never post the name of whoever it was anyway. I have a feeling that she'll calm down and realize she may have overreacted a little bit.
And if she doesn't, that's her loss. You can't discredit all the good someone does for one thing they do that's wrong in your eyes. That's childish and foolish. If having an AM morning show host blesses people even just 20% of the time, then that's roughly 50 times a year that someone will be blessed while you're boycotting the show.
As Christians, we all have the same goal, and you aren't achieving your goal by acting hateful to another Christian because you get offended.
