IF NECESSARY...USE WORDS?!

Preach The Gospel At All Times; When Necessary, Use Words” -falsely attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

The more I hear/read it, the more I want it erased from the memories of everybody who has had it inflicted on them.

“Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words” is one of those sentimental woolly headed pieces of nicety that sounds fine until you realize that it doesn’t really mean a thing. Well, not a true thing anyway.

It’s right up there with such classics as “Give someone your phone number; when necessary use numerals” or “Give someone a meal; when necessary use food.”

The saying is much loved by those who think that Christianity is more about what Jesus "would do" than that which Jesus "has done."

What does it mean?

It implies that WORKS ARE the GOSPEL. If I work hard enough, well enough, loving enough and it shows in my behavior...the person for whom I am working, will find salvation without my using words.
If you’re doing it right, you won’t need words. SALVATION BY OSMOSIS.

Just think, if my good deeds is your good news…that means you’re screwed.
News flash: the “good news” is not about what I can do, it’s about what Christ has done.

PREACH (defined)- speak, plead, or argue in favor of.

The History Part [my minor]

It is historically attributed to Francis of Assisi, not only as his wisdom, but also as the distillation of his life and ministry.  Problem is, there is no evidence that Francis ever uttered that phrase or anything similar. Another problem is that Francis apparently spread the gospel by… preaching!! Surprise, surprise!

From an article by Christian historian Mark Galli come these words:

First, no biography written within the first 200 years of his death contains the saying. It’s not likely that a pithy quote like this would have been missed by his earliest disciples.
Second, in his day, Francis was known as much for his preaching as for his lifestyle.
He began preaching early in his ministry, first in the Assisi church of Saint George, in which he had gone to school as a child, and later in the cathedral of Saint Rufinus. He usually preached on Sundays, spending Saturday evenings devoted to prayer and meditation reflecting on what he would say to the people the next day.

Galli goes on to make the perfectly reasonable point that the Gospel is a word centered communication that should be backed up by action. If you haven’t used words, you haven’t *shared the gospel, though you may have shared the definite effect that the gospel has on your Christian life.

I suspect we sentimentalize Francis—like we do many saints of ages past—because we live in a *sentimental and wimpy (cowardice) age. We want it to be true that we can be nice and sweet and all will be well.

We hope against hope that we won’t have take the trouble to figure out how exactly to talk to someone about the wrath removing gospel of Christ-our unbelieving friends will “catch” the gospel once our lifestyle is infected with it.

“Preach the gospel; use words if necessary” goes hand in hand with a postmodern assumption that words are finally *empty of meaning. It subtly denigrates the high value that the prophets and Jesus and Paul put on preaching.

Of course we want our actions to match our words as much as possible. But the gospel is a "message", news about an "event" and a "Person" upon which the history of the planet revolves. As blogger Justin Taylor recently put it, "the Good News can no more be communicated by deeds than can the nightly news."

The sentiments from Francis that probably gave rise to the saying attributed to him is his teaching that: "Gospel proclamation is inextricably intertwined with Gospel life"- which is the same basic position as Galli's.

Christian ‘Myths’ of this type are *propagated because people want them to be true. They line up with how they want to live. Enough people give them credence and then, regardless of what historians show actually happened, it becomes part of Christian expression.

Maybe we need a Christian version of Snopes.com where Christian Urban Myths can be stored in some form of repository and debunked.

When something as VITAL as the gospel can be clouded by this sort of fine sounding phrase --it can not be opposed too strongly.

Preaching over Coffee.
2 Cups of Coffee Later.
Robbs