God, Smoothies and 80s Pop Stars

I was in a cafe this morning and decided to have a smoothie.

This is not as easy as it sounds if you’re British, because we’re not as able to ask for ludicrously-named drinks as other nationals. Maybe it’s the accent (something else it’s hard to do with an English accent in particular is complain – you inevitably sound like an Imperial Officer in Star Wars threatening an Ewok. So you overcompensate, become embarrassed, and end up sounding like Hugh Grant trying to ask someone out in a 1990s British rom-com).

The smoothie in question was made of kiwi and pineapple. They had named it a ‘Naughty Crush’.

This is a challenge I have experienced before. The parade of coffee shops up and down the High Street do not serve ‘small’ or ‘large’ coffees. They serve ‘grande’ or ‘medio’ frothalottahunkyfunkychunkycheekyccinos. Ordering cocktails also involves similar linguistic acrobatics. So I was disturbed – but not surprised – to discover that the perfectly-usable names of fruit on the menu had been replaced by Strawberry Kiss, Carribean Way and, incomprehensibly, Bananarama Llama Farmer.

“Hi,” I said, determined to keep this engagement as sensible and silly-name-free as possible.

“Hello!” said the smiley cafe person. “What can I get for you?”

“I’ll have a double espresso and a kiwi and pineapple smoothie.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have any,” she said. And then after the briefest pause, added, “we have a Naughty Crush, though.”

I was not expecting this sly but subtle counter-attack. I took a moment to rally my thoughts, and then delivered my order with aplomb and free of silly names.

“I’ll have one of those then, please,” I said.

(The espresso, by the way, came in a giant cup of such proportions that Wifey asked where the rest of the coffee was.)

What’s going on with all this tomfoolery is an attempt to heighten our customer experience. It’s about suggestion. Give a smoothie an edgy, trendy name and you feel edgy and trendy. Make someone order a coffee in Italian and they connect to an imagined Italian coffee experience. If Bananarama Llama Farmer – which is pulverised banana – was named accurately it would be called Baby Food With A Straw.

The church has, it seems, largely resisted the urge to re-name stuff to make it more attractive and influential (possibly because the church tends to largely resist everything). In fact our own name – Christians – wasn’t even a brand we came up with, but probably originally a derisive term coined by non-Christians. Presumably we’d have been happy to keep calling ourselves Not-Necessarily-Jews-But-We-Do-Buy-Into-The-Old-Testament-But-In-Support-Of-Our-Recognition-That- Jesus-Is-The-Messiah…ians.

At face value, this seems great. We’re authentic. We don’t need advertising executives to tell people about Jesus, we tell it like it is, right?

Almost.

A Brand New World

What the branding world is on to is that the human mind cannot escape making associations between things it knows, and the new things it’s encountering. We short-cut. So the cafe wanted me to associate my Naughty Crush with a cheeky but pleasurable feeling – a deeper emotional connection than simply the taste of kiwis and pineapples.

So when we talk about God, or Jesus, or church, the people we talk to will automatically interpret them in the context of how they’ve been previously presented. And if that portrayal was negative, then what you’re saying is going to get viewed within that framework.

This blog has already ranted ad nauseam about the use of religious language, but there’s a couple of other things we need to watch out for.

The first is how you portray Jesus when you talk about him. Look at how he portrayed himself. Study it. Emulate it. This blog would argue that Jesus portrayed himself as an open set of arms, with a social justice agenda, urging a focus on principles rather than religious dogma, who mainly saved his moral criticism for religious hypocrites. Is lecturing people on their sin (for example) and issuing them with a religious to-do list the best way to introduce Jesus? How does he come across when we contribute our viewpoints in public life? Do we get the balance right in presenting the full range of Jesus’ teachings and personality, or do we find ourselves focussing on certain aspects and risk misrepresenting him?

The second is to recognise that when you talk about Jesus, you may be at cross-purposes (yeah, I know) with the person you’re talking to. You think of Jesus as forgiving and loving – but they may have heard nothing but hellfire and damnation their whole life. When you talk about Jesus as ‘forgiving’, you’re making the assumption that this carries the same collection of impressions and emotions for them as it does for you.

It’s Still Just A Smoothie

A great way to short-circuit these two issues is to avoid talking in generalities completely. They just get filed in the person’s head under whatever category Jesus is sitting. It’s not always appropriate to talk like an international super-evangelist. We’re not spiritual troubleshooters either, using our negligible understanding of God’s plan for people’s lives to diagnose why they have trouble with the idea of God and giving them an action plan to fix it. Being a Christian is not like being a technician at Kwik-Fit.

Instead, talk about your experience. Just tell your story. Tell others about your Jesus. Tell people about how you know him. About how you and he dealt with issues of forgiveness, love, peace, sin, belief, doubt and healing in your life. When you find yourself talking in generalities, that’s the time to wind it back down and get back to the personal level.

Non-Christians are – contrary to how some of us think – not a hunting ground for religious scalps. This is not gaming season, and we don’t get extra credit in the exam of life for having ‘led someone to Christ’. All any one of us does is play a role (cameo or starring) in the story of that person and God. It might be a romantic comedy, a thriller, a tragedy, an adventure – who knows?

But you get to choose what role you play.

Will you confuse the hero, or help them?

How will you describe the smoothie?