This GCSE RE Christianity quiz tests you on Christians in society. Being a Christian is not just a matter of personal choice or conviction: God working in and through one's life should be visible to others, so that one becomes 'instrumental' in the working-out of His purposes for the world (so believers believe). Jesus Himself spoke on a number of occasions about believers being like ‘salt’ ~ bringing flavour to life around them ~ and like a shining light (that image again: here, most probably denoting energy, clarity, direction and companionship). A Christian without those quietly assured, leading qualities ~ in appropriate circumstances ~ would invite the disappointment of missed opportunities to have changed matters for the better.
There can be no simple universal rulebook for how all Christians should live-out their faith, since the circumstances, and their own talents and opportunities, are bound to be so varied.
Of course there are general principles such as generosity, truthfulness and indeed prayerfulness; but as Paul writes, ‘Not all are called to be teachers or prophets … ‘; there are, for instance, vital roles in ‘backstage logistics’ as well as for powerful upfront speakers or missionaries.
God may have plans for an individual that the person themself cannot comprehend: there are plenty of examples of that in the Bible (Moses complaining that he was ‘slow of speech’ when commissioned to face-down Egypt’s Pharaoh; the windy Gideon when we first discover him; Jonah, who booked a voyage in the opposite direction when God wanted him to go to Nineveh).
There is meanwhile the tale ~ purportedly true ~ of a young brown-eyed British girl whose best childhood friends were blue-eyed blondes; she prayed she could somehow become like them to fit in better. By early adulthood she had trained as a nurse and was posted somewhere in the Third World, where worried local mothers and other ‘natives’ came preferentially to her with their problems, rather than speak with her colleagues; and one of them one day confided that their prime reason for doing this was that she saw their world through brown eyes like their own, and that this made all the difference.
Now to our quiz on Christians in Society!