When Rick Perry ran for President, he said, “I’m getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do.” This became something easily caricatured by his political opponents. The usual parody went something like, “God told me I’m going to be President.”
Many people who love Jesus at some point experience a feeling of being led by God to do something. But there’s a richness of meaning surrounding that which often goes unexplained. As a consequence, many people who don’t believe see the idea of “God told me to” as ridiculous.
When God leads a person to a certain course of action, his plan may be completely different from the human plan. For example, if God did call Rick Perry to run for President, his purposes may have had nothing to do with Rick Perry actually becoming President (obviously). Perhaps, somewhere along the campaign trail, there was a person who heard Rick Perry call Herman Cain his brother, and asked why. Perhaps that person learned that, often though we may fail, believers try to treat each other as brothers and sisters — as family. And perhaps that person’s behavior towards his fellow man changed because of that.
Maybe — in our hypothetical situation — that person might have been a cruel boss of a large company beforehand. Maybe he was even a racist. And maybe he made a change to his behavior that resulted in his employees of all races being treated better.
Maybe that was what God wanted. And He achieved it by leading Rick Perry into a situation where he could model brotherly love in general, and between people of different races in particular.
It’s important for believers to remember that those who don’t share our culture often don’t get what we’re talking about. Jesus is at the center of our lives, and we think about him almost all the time. Other people don’t invest that much in it. Things that we’ve thought about constantly, they may never have considered.
It’s equally important to encourage people who don’t know Jesus yet to look deeper, rather than laughing at a surface-level statement that doesn’t seem to make sense at first.
Understanding is better than mockery.