4 minute read
Walking the Walk
By Rick Ritchie
There are some things people say that we all latch onto because they make sense the first time we hear them. One I’ve heard quite a bit is, “If you’re gonna talk the talk, you’d better walk the walk.” Or the complaint, “She talks the talk, but she doesn’t walk the walk.” We have a good idea what someone means when they say this: Talking about things doesn’t get them done. If two friends discuss dieting plans over a pizza and bonbons, they won’t get thinner.
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I had always assumed this was a phrase that only circulated in Christian circles. Then I decided to do some research. I ran into an interview where the singer Madonna said of someone who did charity work with her, “He’s one of the few people I know who talks the talk and also walks the walk. He thinks very big.”
So it looks like this phrase is used by more than just Christians.
What makes it sound Christian are the words about the “walk.” In some Christian groups, you hear a lot about our “walk with the Lord.” And this has some grounding in the Bible. But here’s the thing. Usually when someone complains about someone else not “walking the walk” that’s a good example that they themselves aren’t “walking that walk!”
One of the most famous places in the Bible where the term is used is in Micah, where we read:
The idea here is that we walk with God. This is repeated in many places. For example, in the New Testament we find “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light” (Ephesians 5:8).We can see life as a journey. Walking is moving forward. We walk with God, and we walk as those who have light.
As with many Biblical phrases, a lot of other ideas get added to the Biblical ideas over time. Sometimes the additions get so elaborate that when we’re first introduced to the phrase by someone from outside our own circles, we figure this must be one of their strange peculiarities. Or when we leave such a group behind, we dump their language and decide never to use it again because it reminds us of everything we didn’t like about how they did things.
This idea of our “walk with God” might be a good test case for how to handle this.
As we have seen, the phrase occurs in Scripture. God knew what He was doing when He inspired those who wrote Scripture. So the phrase can be a good one. But the fact that some uses of a phrase are Biblical doesn’t mean that they can’t be misused.
Imagine you’re in a conversation with a friend who starts speaking of a third friend and says, “He talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk the walk!” She is indignant because this guy goes to church but seems to be committing sins that should be easy to conquer. What are we to make of this?
When a conversation like this gets rolling, the first casualty is often the Eighth Commandment. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” As Luther explains, this means that we are to guard our neighbor’s reputation. The neighbor here might not be guilty of falling into these sins in the first place. Perhaps this is just gossip that has been circulating. But if the neighbor really is guilty, then why is your friend telling you about it under the guise of diagnosing someone else’s spiritual health? Has she been wronged? Has she gone to the person who wronged her to have it made right? When you’re wronged, deal with that directly. Don’t try to make God into the offended party. He can take care of Himself.
Another thing to remember is that it is easy to imagine that we know which sins are deeper than others, when the reality is, we usually don’t. Every individual has a different set of sins to which he or she is more prone. Some are just lucky enough that their church circles go easy on the same sins. Author Dorothy L. Sayers once said that church circles usually preferred coldhearted sins like greed and gossip to warm-hearted sins like adultery or murder. But the Bible is often just as hard on the cold-hearted sins. In any case, when we start trying to use the Law on each other, we’re apt to be very selective with how we use it. It’s usually best not to get started.
If the Word of God is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path (Psalm 119:105), and if we wish to walk as children of the light ourselves, we must heed it. And guarding our neighbor’s reputation is one way to do this. If one of your Christian friends starts talking about somebody else’s “walk with the Lord,” be on your guard. Your friend may be leading YOU into a ditch. So let us fix our eyes back on Jesus, who “talked the talk AND walked the walk” that we couldn’t, in order to deliver us from our sins and therefore make us walk with God.
Rick Ritchie earned his bachelor’s degree at Concordia University Irvine in 1988, and graduated with a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1990, after which he became Lutheran. He can be reached at teacher@reflutheran.org
