Hurrah for Johnny Cash when he refused to perform a bedroom scene with a nude actress in his movie A Gunfight. The scene was fairly tame by film standards at that time, but this is what Cash said about it: “I couldn’t do that scene. How could I do that and then record an album of hymns? Or talk on my television show about what religion means to my life? I’d be a hypocrite.”
That is the kind of consistency we need today. The cure of modern-day Christianity is that Christians live by a higher standard than those who profess no faith in Jesus. To do this does not mean that someone is odd or that he is always calling attention to himself. Dr. John Broadus put his personal philosophy in a capsule by saying that when he walked down the street he did not want strangers to be able to recognize him as a minister. He added, however, that he did not want them to be surprised when they found out. That is the way it should be with all of us. We should quietly, but unashamedly, go about living for Christ.
This is not always easy to do. There are always some who will criticize and scoff at those who are different. The Japanese have a proverb that says, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” The Christian is often a marked man. However, the higher life is worth the price of ridicule.