Black or Green?

Sue and I were watching football on TV recently, when I froze the picture on a spectator, and told her to look at his strange green shirt. When she said that the shirt looked black to her, I had the thought that she might be going colorblind. It was clearly green.

Knowing that women are usually right, I stood up and walked across to look at the TV from her perspective. Sure enough, she was right. The shirt was black. But when I sat back down in my seat, the shirt turned back to green. We couldn't both be right. Or could we?

As I looked closely at the TV screen, I noticed that light from a window that was behind me was reflecting exactly on the man's shirt. The light, or the absence of it, changed the color of the shirt, depending on your perspective.

From an atheist's perspective, Christianity looks like a black and lifeless stump. Christians really stink. But Christians see Christendom as a huge, beautiful, green, fruit bearing tree. They can't both be right. Or can they?

Look at how the Bible addresses the two differing perspectives:

"Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume..." (2 Corinthians 2:15-17 (NLT).

So who is right? Do Christians stink of "a dreadful smell of death and doom," or are we a really "sweet" smelling people? It all depends on the light you have. If you are godless, you have no light at all. But when you come to the light, you will not only see biblical Christianity in a completely different light, you will understand why you so scorned it, and why you had such contempt for those who love God. It is for the same reason criminals scorn the police, and hold them in contempt.