Message or Messenger?

 

and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?" And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household." And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief. 
(Matthew 13:54-58 ESV)

Do you ever wonder why your witness tends to be better received among those who know you the least? Of course this is not always the case. Not everyone can be a Scott Hahn right? However, in my observation, of my own life and the lives of others, I have found folks with rather powerful messages. Often times they are very popular figures, champions of truth even... but in their own families, you find characters in the outskirts of the church, of society, etc. One dimension of it is simply free will and God's grace, whom He grants to whomever He wishes, and by whatever quantity (or quality) He desires. However, beyond that, I believe there is yet another dimension, a psychological block perhaps, a bias against the messenger. The messenger's reputation precedes him/her. I can appreciate and respect that cognitive bias. I think, however, we need to shed ourselves of these biases, and realize we are all in the same boat. We are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God at one time or another. If God so chooses to use us as instruments, broken vessels as we may be, then so be it. Unfortunately, messages are often ignored or rejected because of past and even present sins. I can also appreciate and respect this bias as well. I'll give one relevant example here, and forgive me if you are involved in this scenario. Once I was invited to a little outing at a popular chain of restaurants. It was a mixed bag from the entire spectrum of Catholicism. When the food came, there was a rather visible and audible effort to make it clear this was a Catholic table. After all, I was told, we should not be afraid to be public with our Catholic identity. As the evening progressed, the table got louder and louder, sugar packets were being tossed from one end to the other. A mess was made and it was left that way. I also noticed the expressions on the faces of the older ladies in the booth next to us. I made my concerns known to my cohorts later on, that on the one hand it is laudable to not shrink away from public display of our Catholic identity, but it also behooves us not to then become jackasses after. Once it is known we are Catholics, we have now become the "official" representation of Catholic-Christianity, at least to those around us.

So in summary, I would propose two efforts for reformation for both the sender and receiver of truth claims. 

1) For the sender: If you wish to claim to be the bearer of truth, or at least a representative of that truth, then you now have an obligation to live it, especially publicly, since you may be the one who helps to bring a person back to truth, or sadly the person that brings them out of it.

2) For the receiver: Judge the quality of the message on the contents of the message and not the quality of the messenger alone. After all, there are those messages which are of good quality, delivered by not so great men, and there are very dynamic, exciting, and personable men whose messages are not of great quality.