Bishop Writes with Bishop Ivan Lee: June 2006

I am writing this column on the very day that The Da Vinci Code hits the big screens all over Australia. It has been interesting seeing how different churches around Australia and the world have reacted – ranging from calls to boycott the film, a stance of indifference (‘it’s fiction – why react and give it more publicity?’), right through to booking up cinemas and taking your friends. I, for one, support any method, within reason, which will initiate conversations about Jesus and create opportunities to point people to the real Jesus of the gospels.

No doubt, another Dan Brown will write another ‘fiction based on fact’ that will ignite people’s appetite for conspiracy theories, especially ones that “threaten the very foundations of the Christian church” as the promoters put it. But if not, there will be some other next big thing that will either attack biblical Christianity head on, or create such a talking point in the community that we would be crazy not to seize the day.

But having said that we must take advantage of these more sensational opportunities, I want to give a plug for everyday opportunities and everyday Christianity – partly because we won’t always have a Da Vinci going on, and partly because life is actually, well, ordinary most days. The challenge of being a good Christian witness lies in how we live and walk and talk, in the routines of life. We are to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth, in our everyday lives.

In my travels I have the wonderful opportunity of meeting many new believers. I am always fascinated by their stories of how they have come to faith in Jesus. It’s amazing how often the story goes something like: “I met Robert (or Rachel), and he was different to everyone else… kind, a person of integrity, a positive approach to life, faithful, caring, an inner joy (it varies)… and then one day he mentioned he was a Christian and invited me along to something his church was running… and I went… and the rest is history.”

Bottom line? Transformed people filled with the Spirit, living Christ-centred lives, being changed from one degree of glory to the next. Not everyone will notice the ‘glory’ within us, but some will, and be attracted to that glory.

Yes, let us seize the Da Vinci days, they are important, but nowhere near as important as how we live every day, because that is what promotes the gospel, and makes it more likely people will say ‘Yes’ when we ask them to a Jesus event.

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