Trevor Noah
Recently, I commented on what I think the best response to the mocking comments of Trevor Noah regarding Jesus, to me personally would be. I posted it on Facebook in Afrikaans. The response was overwhelming. Thus far my post got 220 likes and almost a hundred shares. I wrote an English version. Here it is:
I see many Christians try to showcase how “great” a Christian they are by vocally rejecting Trevor Noah and what he said about Jesus on a recent Daily Show. They promise to boycott him, to never listen to anything he says again.
This is not a new thing, this tendency among Christians to think that the best way to showcase your faith in Jesus is to show how venomously you could reject, criticize and even hate people who says wrong things about Jesus or doesn’t share your faith. This behaviour has no correlation with that of Jesus Himself.
As for me, I have decided to rather be a “little” Christian. I am going to do that by taking into account Trevor Noah’s whole life story (as told by him in “Born a Crime”) when I listen to what he has to say about Jesus. I am going to remind myself how churches confused him by proclaiming a reality that didn’t match his own experiences under Apartheid in South Africa. I am going to bemoan the fact that he doesn’t believe in Jesus with his devoted mother and grandmother; but I am also going to remind myself that faith isn’t an achievement but a gift of grace from God. I am going to keep on enjoying Trevor’s sharp critique of politics and society and use it to ask myself important questions about the world in which I live. I am going to continue taking my hat of to the fact that this man, who came from humble beginnings in townships now entertain millions of people on a world stage with his intelligence and wit. That despite huge struggles with his ethnical identity and an absent father that he had to overcome. I will even continue to listen to his critique against the church and religion and reflect on my own witness in the light of that. I am going to stop to expect Christian morals and behaviour from people who are not Christians (because even after many years of being a follower of Jesus I sometimes still find maintaining this high standard hard).
I refuse to build my own image by pointing fingers at someone who I depict as being somehow “worse” than me. The reality is that I might just have received more grace or received it a bit earlier than such people. I would rather be a little Christian with a great Christ than being a great Christian with an even greater ego…
When are we going to learn that the best proof for the purity of our faith and devotion to Christ is how we love and treat people different from us?
Gabriel J Snyman
April 28 2020