Leslie Ludy, an American author and speaker, writes
A Christian publisher once told me, “You shouldn’t always write about missionary Christians… Why don’t you share about some normal, everyday Christians who live in the suburbs and work for IBM? Those kind of Christians are just as important as the ones who go to the mission field. Don’t just focus on Christians who had a ‘special calling’ to go and change the world”.
Well, sorry to be blunt, but most “normal, everyday” Christians… are living pleasure-seeking, self-absorbed lives… Are we, as the majority of American Christians, pouring ourselves out for the lost of the least, or are we lying on our couches, eating pizza and watching reality TV”
“That’s a double ooch” (as many middle-aged people might recall from ‘The Banana Splits’)
I have not read much of Mrs Ludy, but I like (most of) the little that I have read. She seems wise on marriage and the roles of men and women. My wife has read more – and likes it.
But here Mrs Ludy gets to the very nub of Middle-Aged With A Mission and I think she is wrong – or, maybe, , she is right in places but very wrong in others.
Mrs Ludy describes the lives of ”normal, everyday” Christians - where they work; where they live; and how they spend their free time – and suggests they are pleasure-seeking and self-absorbed. The message being that if we work for IBM, live in the ‘burbs and lie on couches eating pizza and watching reality TV we are Bad People.
Hmm, it’s a little more complex than that. Can you spot the odd ones out of those three characteristics?
Is working for IBM so bad? Is there really not a Christian way to do it? Surely IBM – and other large, profitable companies, let alone other workplaces - need the gospel; they need people working with integrity, keeping their conduct among the Gentiles honourable (1 Pet 3:12)? Also, by working at IBM (and elsewhere), Christians can work and live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one (1 Thess 4:11, 12).
I am fully with Mrs Ludy on questioning our desire to live in ‘nice’ places and TV-watching habits. But those of us who work for IBM (or the equivalent) read little about Christian who aren’t professional ministers (that’s most of us) who are in secular employment yet who are fruitful (in the John 15:5ff way). There is certainly a danger that we just live in the ‘burbs and watch TV because the only alternative given is to become professional Christian ministers.
That is partly because professional Christian ministers (dare I say, such as Mrs Ludy) do not encourage those of us who work at IBM – either by how they live (well, they can’t) or by what they say.
Mrs Ludy is wrong and the publisher she quotes is right: we need more biographies about Christians working at IBM than we do those about overseas missionaries or, indeed, other professional ministers. We need to be encouraged how to glorify God in our everyday lives and not to think that somehow we have ‘missed’ it if we are in secular employment.
