ACTING OUR AGE

At one time another, perhaps more times than we would like to admit, have been told, "Act your age!" We were doing something silly, maybe downright immature, and an elder called us to task by reminding us that someone of our years does not act in that sort of manner. They were right; but they were also wrong, for the most part most of the time.

So, too, would someone be wrong if we were told to "Act like a Christian" when catching us doing something that is unchristian. You see, the problem we all have is not so much in acting our age or acting like a Christian. We do that all of the time. I act like a seventy-nine-year-old, almost all of the time.  What I don't always do is react as a Christian. We all know what actions are demanded of us both by society and by ourselves according to our age. We don't expect a six-year-old to act like one who is sixty – and vice versa.

With age and maturity come a knowledge of how to act, how to live. The same is true for us acting like a Christian. Six-year-olds and sixty-year-olds act differently. The emphasis is not on acting, as in faking it, pretending, playing at it. It is on acting as in actions, Our actions, what we do, should be done according to what our age and maturity require.

Our reactions, often, are not. All too often we tend to react, not according to our age, not according to our faith. Someone hurts us and we react quickly. And in that reaction we turn, not the other cheek but the back of our hand or the backside of our character. We do and say things that, given time, given thought, we would not say or do. Reactions, all too often, are passionate responses to a situation.

What all this means is that we must react like a Christian. Our quick response should be the same as our slower, thought-out, reflective response. If that were always the case, we would save ourselves much grief and torment. But it is not always the case. I suspect that in the vast majority of the situations where we do something selfish, sinful, foolish, what we do is react in an unchristlike way. They are reactions of passion. We get hurt and we immediately react. We become defensive. We pout. We shout. We repay in kind or worse.

Acting as Jesus would, responding as Jesus would have us, is not in the forefront of our thinking at that moment of real hurting, at that moment of our life. What we wind up doing then is something stupid...and paying for it for a long time because the person whom we are reacting to reacts to our immature, unchristlike reaction -- and then the whole vicious cycle goes on and on and on.

There will probably never be a time when we always say and do what we should.  We will never always react as a Christian. But that does not mean that we give up. We must keep working at it through prayer, good works, reading of Scripture – through doing all those actions we know are necessary in order to grow up into a Christian person. When we fail, we ask for forgiveness and start over. When we succeed, we simply thank God for he is the One, through his Son and Spirit, who enables us to react our age, to react our faith.