~ Hard Sell Soft Sell

“You are my friends if you do what I command you.” John 15:14

Nowadays there seems to be two ways to get things done – Hard sell or Soft sell.  For that matter perhaps it has been that way for a long time and we simply chose to not see it.  There was a time when this was not so.

At one time each of us has noticed a young, or not so young, person who has taken great care of their body.  These physical specimens are described as buffed or hard, with their muscular definition as a high point of their attraction.  On the other hand most days of the week each of us will bounce off someone who has not looked after their body.  Often as not for many of us it is in the reflection in the mirror, and there is not just one or two words used to describe such an appearance.

The verse above is one that many of us, unconsciously perhaps, would choose to take from their Bibles.  It would be far easier to take this verse out so that the passage verses 12 to 16 reads:

“This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends. ... I don’t call you servants any longer, because servants don’t know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, 

But that is not how it is written.  Jesus makes this love command follows it up with the ultimate expression of live and then says.  “You are my friends IF ...” and then goes on to speak about servants, slaves in the cultural context, as if the difference between the disciples and slaves was that they knew the master plan and slaves did not.  By implication in both cases there is the clear meaning of doing as the Master desired.

This is not a random passage, somewhere where He went on a power trip so to speak, the passages on the vine and branches have a similar sense.  But I do not intend to write on that here, instead the focus is on how we manage to divest the Divine Imperative in our daily lives and in our dealings with others.

These words of Jesus are “Hard Sell.”  So much so that such comments caused the multitude to melt away during His ministry years.  What do we see in our here and now, it is mostly “Soft Sell”?

“Gentle Jesus meek and mild” is deemed a mockery by most of those who are not of a church persuasion and the “God is love” concept is one standard cop out when thing do not go well.  And yet we continue to use them as out standard fare when trying to entice people to enter into relationship with the Almighty all the time choosing to gloss over the meatier parts of the Good News such as verse 14.

In addition to these omissions we also find it easier to live the “soft” life to the detriment of our testimony.  People will look at Christians in three possible ways.  First and most common is “they are no different to me”, this is commonly linked with the second way that of the “rule imposer” which gets as short a shrift sometimes they get connected with the word “WHY” and the least common is the “Wow there is something that is different about you – what is it”

Personally I would rather that I was in the latter of the three categories.  It seems easier to make a soft sell when the client is asking the right questions.