Are you a Christian Secret Agent?

Splashed across the front covers of this week's The Weekend Australian Magazine is a picture of ABC's managing director Mark Scott, with the headlines, "Meet the evangeliscal Christian and management wonk who's running your ABC."

It certainly did make me think of what all of our vocations mean to us, how we live out our faiths from the inside out and bear the image of God that is not hocus-pocus, but, to borrow Tom Wright's words, "simply Christian". Everyday ordinary folk - although the word "ordinary" does stem from the etymological roots of "belonging to a higher order" - who are well received not because of their labels, but because of their irresistable down-to-earth humanity.

"People were wary," says Triple J manager Linda Bracken, of the mood within ABC towards Mark Scott's new appointment. Especially after a distastrous predecessor who "detonated the ABC's staff-driven culture" and "wreaked havoc in some sections of the broadcaster".

"But Mark is different," Bracken was quoted as saying. "He immediately began to generate goodwill."

Indeed, as former journalist, editor and political spinner, Scott's Christian faith has come under scrutiny. Some view him as one of "God's secret agents trying to bring the life and light of Jesus into one of the most hostile parts of our society, the media."

This is, undoubtedly, the way in which some of us view ourselves, and the way we relate to others in our secular workplace environments. Are we really "God's secret agents"?

There is, I suspect, nothing secret about it. If the Jews in the Old Testament times were marked out as the chosen people of God by the law, the equivalent for us today is the law that has now been inscribed upon our hearts. The fruit that we bear, a faith that is expressed in our works, should mark us out as people with a distinctly different and peculiar worldview, and perhaps even piquant approach to life.

We don't have to bang on about our labels, if there is even to be anything subtly subversive about our identity as Christian people. All we've been called to do is to be as human as we can, to be who we have been created to be, and to bear the image of God that have been buried under centuries of amnesia.

The city on a hill cannot be hidden, and a tree shall be known by its fruit. Salt that retains its saltiness will draw out the flavoursome goodness of the main meal.

Although the end result might paint quite a different vision from the one most of us would've liked to imagine. Without labels, there shall be no accolades to store away in our treasure chest of pride and boasting, no elevating ourselves above "the rest", no thinking we are better off than anyone else.

Ah. Such is the Christian life. Ordinary folk living lives of obscurity, whom in their Image-bearing, shall bring one more piece of heaven down onto earth.