Do Christians Spy?

Thursday night, on the Celebrity Apprentice, we saw a clear interaction between Christ and culture. In fact, of all the Apprentice episodes I’ve seen never has Christ been mentioned more without being a pejorative.

Stephen Baldwin, put in the difficult position of representing Christians, found himself in an ethical quandary succinctly stated by Trump himself: “Do Christians Spy?” You see, depending upon your perspective, Baldwin was involved in either a controversial strategic move or a joke gone bad when one of his teammates was sent to “rat” on the opposition.

From my perspective, and this is limited by the way the show was edited together, it seemed like Baldwin got caught up in the joke but then later realized he shouldn’t be doing it. He realized he shouldn’t be involved in spying when he was passed a note containing the secret information. While he wouldn’t pick up the note (or even touch it, it seemed) he went and got his team and told them to pick it up.

What does this teach us about the interaction between Christ and culture? When you think of your spiritual life as separate from your business life you exemplify the Christ and Culture in Paradox perspective. With such a perspective a bridge between your faith as a Christian and your practices as a businessman (as in this example) doesn’t get crossed. This might mean that although you believe in Christ and call others to do the same (as Baldwin did with one of his teammates) you might not act like a Christian should with the honesty that Jesus calls us to (and spy on your opponents, for example). This can open us up for the charge of being hypocritical- as Baldwin was accused.

Sure Baldwin talked a lot about “integrity” as a business essential for Christian businessmen, but it didn’t pan out for him in that way, instead he (and this is the second topic of this blog) attempted to justify his own actions. This is always unfortunate because as believers we know that Christ has paid for our sins and we no longer have to justify ourselves since Christ has done it for us already. Instead we can now confess our sins and call them what they are.

Now I don’t intend to beat up my brother in Christ. If I were filmed constantly, others could blog about my inconsistencies for all the world to see as well. I say this as an example to help other believers (including myself) resist the temptation to compartmentalize our lives into spiritual and secular. You can see why this doesn’t work well as you watched tonight. You can see that this inconsistency makes us want to justify ourselves rather than own up to our sins. You can see the affect it has on how the world sees us as Christians (there it is, I’ve included the third major topic of my blog- apologetics).

Instead of compartmentalizing our lives between the spiritual and secular, we should endeavor to transform culture. The Christ Transforming Culture encourages us to work to make the world a better place for everyone because of our faith. Tonight this would have resulted in Baldwin stopping himself once he realized the joke was getting out of hand (which is hard for anyone; I couldn’t have done it either- I was laughing at the whole shenanigan too). He could have helped the group by redirecting their energies away from the joke and back onto the task. This would have removed the need for him to justify himself- in fact, to confess his own sin would have been a great way to help make this transformation. With that this could have been a great stepping stone into sharing the Gospel with his teammates- so few people confess their sins (especially Christians) that I’ve found it a wonderful way to share the wonderful news of the Gospel.

But, like I said, this is easy for me to say because I don’t have cameras recording everything I do and say- and I hope I never do.