We want proof.
Evidence that substantiates claims.
When searching for a product on Amazon or elsewhere, I appreciate five-star reviews, but I mostly comb through the text responses and look for genuine feedback. Best are real pictures of the thing in someone’s house. Videos of them using it. Anecdotes from reviewer about the ease or difficulties of the product’s use. Proof that it lives up to the claims of the manufacturer.
Our lives similarly serve as totem to those around us. Others are able to witness all of the things we profess in action (or inaction) in our lives and then gauge for themselves both consciously and subconsciously how it looks in real life, not just on a brochure. Whether we recognize it or not, we are carrying the flag of our family, our job, and our beliefs everyday. And we make constant statements about each without saying a word.
“You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read just by looking at you. Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives - and we publish it.”
Acknowledging this reality is at once freeing and heavy. For we need not craft a master soliloquy, but we also accept that our daily lives serve as the manifestation of what we ascribe to, for better or for worse. We are the showcase (and maybe the only showcase) that other people will get close enough to truly scratch and sniff.
This leads me to ask several questions about my life: What would someone watching me say I value? What would they say my belief system is? Would they say they wanted to be more or less like me? Weighty questions to consider, but more than worth our time to do so.
Some people may get to watch us for years to accurately form their picture of us, while others might only get a snapshot from a single interaction. Ideally, regardless of exposure rate or period, the people we engage with would say we well represented our family, job, and beliefs. They might even say there is something about us, even if they didn’t have the time to figure out exactly what. Let us redouble our efforts in light of this reality and truly become what which we claim to value.