Gross cliches' A.K.A Jesus, Barney, and the stripped power of the Gospel.

    I do not like cliche' statements.  Every time I hear some one utter a trite like quip and hide it behind the smoke screen of sage wisdom I throw up in my mouth a little bit.  Ok so I don't do that, mostly because people think it's really gross, and let's admit it, it is gross, but my stomach does start to hurt a little bit.  I believe the point is made cliches are annoying.

    If your sitting there wondering what my definition of a cliche' is let me give you a few examples, in no particular order I give you five common cliches'

1) When God closes a door he opens a window
2) Hate the sin love the sinner
3) Seven days with out prayer makes one weak
4) It takes more faith to be an atheist than to be a Christian (guilty of using this one)
5) God don't make no junk (this one is not even grammatically correct)

    The issue is not the truth in these above statements (although I wonder about some of them), the issue is that when we fire off these type of responses we make our entire belief system pretty laughable, if you need proof of that check out

http://unreasonablefaith.com/ (warning there is some material on here that you will find offensive.)

    It has been my experience that cliche' statements are uttered when someone does not know what else to say.  It has also been my experience that there are few things that do more damage to the Gospel, than packaging it into cute little sayings that fit on certain types of candy.  Our entire way of relating to God and to others begins to take on the look of a bad Barney episode.  Maybe this is part of the reason that James warns us to be slow to speak.

Let me put it this way(even at the risk of creating a cliche');  If were spending our life firing off cute Christian sayings, I have to assume were not spending our life studying the scriptures.  

This can be quite a problem for ministers who stand in front of people every week and try to convey the message of Christ.  Our temptation is to cut the gospel into easy to digest sound bites that the people can easily remember.  Here is the issue though.  Most of the scriptures are deep and challenging, cliches and sound bites do not do them justice and strip them of their power.


It's amazing to me that Jesus was always able to make truth memorable and relevant with out making it cliche'.

So how about you, what cliches have you heard recently, and what steps do you take to make sure you live a cliche' free faith?