He & She, Us & Them

The theme for CF tonight was ‘Get REAL: He & She’. ‘Get REAL’ is a new thing in CF (maybe it’s just for this year) where the members are encouraged to invite their non-CF friends along for the meeting, so that they can join us in a topical discussion/forum/Q&A session. For tonight, the topic of discussion was ‘He & She’, focusing on what we’ve always wanted to know about the opposite gender (and why we can never fully understand them!).

During the session, however, things threatened to boil over when some of us spoke quite harshly about the opposite gender. I’m so glad Pastor Joanne, who was chairing the meeting, handled them well. If it was me doing it, I think I would have been stunned into paralysis! I felt quite uncomfortable during certain parts of the meeting, especially when either one of two Middle-Eastern friends who came spoke. But after reflecting on it, I learnt a few things from the experience.

Why did we feel uncomfortable? Cultural differences did contribute to it. We Malaysians tend to be more careful about what we say (just in case we hurt someone else) compared to those from more Western countries where they prefer to be more direct. Another reason, I suspect, is that we have grown up with this impression that people are supposed to speak differently in 'Christian meetings'. Maybe we have been in our 'Christian' bubbles for too long, so that when another person doesn't think like us, speak like us, and act like us, our alarm systems go off... and I think this is a problem for churches and Christian groups generally. 'Outsiders' don't feel comfortable going to church because people look at them funny when they don't act right, don't talk right and don't think right (where ‘right’ has more to do with conforming to the group rather than what Jesus thinks is right). Most of churches nowadays do not create an atmosphere where people like them can just be real, yet still be accepted into the group.

It wasn’t that the rules of the discussion were not emphasized enough or not clear enough. They were quite clear to me. It's just that maybe some people do not know how to go about it, because they were not raised like us in Christian circles. And we really can't blame them! Unlike us Christians, they haven't been trained to put on a 'Christian' mask when attending Christian meetings! And this is a good thing! Some of us were quite quick to judge others about sex before marriage, but we have forgotten that the idea of 'having sex before marriage is wrong' is very Christian! And that some of those friends of ours may not have been brought up with that belief!

So if there was anything wrong about the session last night, in my opinion, it would be that we Christians were not really prepared to engage with people who are different from us. Maybe we (myself included) have been stuck in our bubbles for too long. Maybe we need to prepare ourselves more to converse with people like these, and accept them into our community. If we look at Jesus, He had no problems mixing with those who did not ‘think right, speak right and act right’. I remember reading something about this in ‘More Ready than You Realize’.

The whole session became a real eye-opener for me, not in the sense of how non-CF people act, but how we can be stunned and do not know how to react to them! I think the session was fruitful in that non-Christians actually came and participated. I think it gave them an opportunity to 'get REAL' by allowing them to be themselves, without being told that their ideas were not wanted (at least, I hope we didn’t give them such signals). Maybe we Christians just need to be reminded before such meetings that people are going come and they are not going to fit into our 'mold' and we need to be ready for it. We not only need to accept them, but to actually allow them to be a part of our community; to learn to look at these friends of ours as ‘us’, rather than ‘them’.

This is why I like the CF theme for this year so much: Live it REAL!

The theme on its own means to live life real - to be real to ourselves, realizing the reality of events that are taking place around us, to stop being engrossed with our own problems, and to take up our position as Christ's real followers. ~ Charis Liew, our dear CF president

I’m looking forward to next week’s ‘Masquerade’, which will touch on the ‘masks’ that we Christians have the habit of putting up. We’re all supposed to dress up as someone we are not. I wonder what I’ll be wearing… I’m also definitely looking forward to Get REAL 2: Question a Christian, where people can just come and ask questions about Christianity and Christians.