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How Your Posture Turns Off People

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Posture—a conscious mental or outward behavioral attitude.

As a Christian, I have done many things that turns off a non-believer. In fact, it might even be why they are a non-believer.  A lot of this has to do more with my posture than my words.

Hugh Halter, author of Tangible Kingdom, talks a lot about posture in the Christian community. Here is an example:

Many times our church culture requires or pressures others to “behave” even before they “believe”, and most certainly before they can “belong”.

How does our posture turn off people?

Our Words Don’t Match Our Actions

We live and talk one way within our church culture and a completely different way outside it. We pretend that non-believers don’t notice. I’ll let you in on a secret, they notice.

Our Words Don’t Communicate What We Think They Do

When we begin to talk about spiritual things, our speech becomes unnatural and meaningless. The church culture language doesn’t mean much outside of its context. Not only does it not make sense, it is a big turn off.

Our Actions and Words Objectify People 

When our aim is to “evangelize” instead of loving them as ourselves, we cease to see them as people with emotions, intelligent thoughts, and heritage. I cringe when I hear a Christian, or even worse, a pastor say that they are working on “a project” referring to some poor soul who has no idea that they are this person’s “project.”

My friends that live across the street are Jewish. I read the wife’s blog from time to time. Here is what she said in a post last year:

I shy away from people who push their religious views without being asked for them. I shy away from people who think I am going to Hell simply because I don’t believe exactly as they do. I shy away from people who feel like they need to “save me”.

Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t pray that I see your light. Just be happy that I have a relationship with God that in its own right is beautiful and loving and perfect…for me.

My neighbor is my friend. We don’t have the same opinion about God. I believe that Jesus Christ is God and that He is the only way to know God. She believes that how we choose to worship is man-made and all religions lead to the same God. I am not alarmed by what she thinks or believes even though I don’t agree with it.

My wife and I love this couple. We enjoy being around them. They are expecting their first child after suffering two miscarriages. We pray often for their new unborn child asking God to give them a healthy pregnancy and birth.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a blog, True Christianity Does Not Judge. In the blog I stated:

What is the best way for my neighbor to know Jesus Christ? By me hanging out with him, eating together, working together, playing together, living life together.

The subtlety here is that I choose to live life with others where they live life. I do not expect them to come to me or to my way of thinking before I will accept them or love them.

My desire is that my non-Christian friends understand that I am more like them than I am different. I have flaws and am on a journey to know and understand God. I hope that we can share life in that journey.

Where do you live your life?

About the Author

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I am a longtime Austinite. Married my beautiful wife over 35 years ago. Adopted our son September 2012.
As a small business and nonprofit coach/consultant, I have found my sweet spot. I lean on my varied background of corporate, small business ownership, writing, and pastoring as I work to help small business owners and nonprofit founders build the business they want to have.


  • This reminds me of Brennan Manning’s challenge: “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

  • Kenny, I agree. Some of the comments we make turn unbelievers away from us. Worse than that, is the way we live our lives – we may not be a good witness in the way we don’t engage our neighbors, as one example. And most importantly, we need to have some unbelievers who are our friends. We need to do life with them on their turf. Thanks for modeling that in your life.

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