Last night at one point in the little kids’ class, the teacher talked about Jesus’ blood as a fountain and how it washes our sins away. Most of the kids are used to hearing things like this, even though they don’t really know what it means yet. But one child was not used to hearing this. She gasped when she heard about the blood fountain. A blood fountain sounds terrible and gross. So some explanation was necessary.
When you sin, the payment for doing that is death. But if we die to pay for our own sins, we won’t go to Heaven. So Jesus decided to die instead of us so we could go to Heaven. His blood paid for sins instead of ours.
I don’t think the dear child fully understood that either, but I think she will one day. She got me to thinking about something I’ve thought about before. If you don’t know anything about Christianity, it sounds really weird and gross. Christians sometimes talk about blood fountains and being bathed in blood. If you don’t know what that’s talking about, we sound like a horrible cult. So depending on the audience, it might be better for us to use different words and explanations than the “church-ese” we often use.
Sometimes you need to take a different outlook and approach. Meet people where they are, because sometimes some explanation is required.