Go and sin no more
Once upon a time I wrote about how Jesus always accepted people where they were. One faithful reader (correctly) pointed out that Jesus was in the habit of commanding people to sin no more. So there is a balance to be struck- a balance between meeting people where they are at and helping get them to where they need to be. Take, for example, the man by the pool of Bethesda (John 5): Jesus met him where he was and took pity on him. When the man explained that he could never be healed by the pool’s water, Jesus simply told him to pick up his mat and leave. Here is the interesting thing: Jesus told the man to pick up his mat and walk away- this command was a command to technically sin by the law of the time. It was a sabbath, and carrying one’s bedclothes from one place to another was sin. But Jesus also told the man to stop sinning before something bad happened to him. So… How could the Son of Man tell someone to sin out of one side of his mouth and to stop sinning out of the other? Or perhaps this story (like so many in the New Testament) is supposed to illustrate that God’s law is not man’s law- someone whom man may judge to be a sinner by their standard may be righteous in the eyes of He who is called I Am.
Another example of this would be the woman caught in adultery (John 8). Someone caught in adultery was to be stoned- this was the law. To fail to stone her would be to usurp the law. Yet Jesus disobeyed the law’s command and spared her- but in the same breath, told her not to sin. So what is the answer? To obey the law, or disobey it?
In John 9, shortly after Jesus heals the man born blind, we see the Pharisees saying that Jesus’s miracles must be false because “he is a sinner.”
Jesus, the Son of God, the perfect Lamb, is judged by his contemporaries as being all full up of sin. He desecrated the Sabbath, he flaunted his lawlessness, surely this man could not speak for God!
Pick up your mat, and stop sinning. This would be, to someone of the time, the equivalent of ordering someone to stand perfectly still while jumping up and down. Surely these two things could not be done simultaneously- not without a miracle. But that is precisely what Jesus was, a miracle. He delivered his people out from under the law while simultaneously teaching them the law. The law, that is, that is fulfilled through loving the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul, and mind- and loving thy neighbor as thyself.
Try, for a minute, to imagine how revolutionary it must have seemed for the people of the time to hear the disciples teaching that Christ had freed us from under the law while at the same time telling them to remain pure. Remain pure? Without the law? Be innocent as doves but be allowed to eat meat sacrificed to idols? How is that even supposed to work?
I think we’ve forgotten the magic of the gospel, the miracle of being not condemned. We must have, because we still want to cling to legalism and systems as our salvation, we still want pat answers about who is and isn’t okay. We’re still afraid to be seen in the company of tax collectors and whores.
Retreating back to legalism in the face of Jesus’s sacrifice, for me, would be an act of treason.
What in the world to do about Sin in the Church?
In yesterday’s post there were a lot of hypothetical questions. One of the biggest was “when is it okay to kick someone out because of persistent sin?” This started an interesting comment thread, and I felt the need to research one formula that was mentioned. The common wisdom in most church circles is that if you have a dispute with a fellow believer, you approach them alone. If they fail to be convicted by your words, you take an elder and try again. If this is unsuccessful, they face castigation by the greater body. If they are belligerent, they are asked to leave.
Why is this a common formula? It comes from the Bible!
Matthew 18: 15-17 (NIV)
“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
I think there are many times these verses are abused in the name of doing right. Firstly, I’d like to point out the stipulation that this formula is for when a brother sins against you. If I, in the quiet of my own home, watch an inappropriate movie or choose to drink, I am not sinning against you, I’m sinning against myself. If I were to have an attraction to people of my own gender, that is between me and myself, not the larger church body. If I tend to hold grudges, or wallow in depression, or over eat- these are all sins which carry an internal consequence. I harm myself. No truly quantifiable harm is happening to anyone else. Were I to tbe cast from my local church body for these personal foibles, then, more harm would be done than good. The larger church body would not benefit from my being gone (in any sense other than feeling more holy for lack of me) and I myself would be deprived of the very people that could be my salvation. Note that I say all of this in a purely hypothetical sense- I make every attempt to cast out pervasive sins God reveals to me, and I’ve never been deliberately kicked out of a church body. I do not make this argument to defend myself or as a rebuttal to a wrong the church has committed against me.
I just think Christians ought to seriously consider the long term affects of rebuking a fellow believer out of self-righteousness.
Not that there isn’t any use for those verses or for practicing them. If a fellow believer does sin in a way that wrongs his body, action should be taken. If a believer is a bullier, a gossip, flirts with another believer’s spouse and does not desist when asked to, is caught in adultery, shows up on at church functions drunk and disorderly, seeds fear or discontent knowingly and creates a bitter spirit… such a person should be approached in exactly the manner proscribed by the Bible, to it’s fullest extent if necessary.
My biggest problem with these verses and this formula is that I’ve more often seen them used against people guilty of sinning against themselves (despite their attempt to change, or their need for compassion) or as a justification for bigotry, but I’ve not often seen them used against the people who most need to be confronted with the malicious nature of their sin.
The teenager who falls and finds herself pregnant needs compassion and a strong arm to lean on. The Elder who uses the prayer tree as a way to gossip and cause division needs to be confronted. The wife who leaves an emotionally manipulative and cruel husband needs someone to help her heal, not force her back into the arms of her abuser- the man who constantly seeds discontent and division in the church needs to be rebuked. The teenager who questions their sexuality needs a hand to hold and a sympathetic ear- The man who persists in misogynistic behavior and becomes a stumbling block for the women in his church needs to be reigned in.
And I could keep going.
I guess what I am ultimately saying is that when judgments must be made about sin, they need to be made with forethought as to their consequences, through compassion and intercession and discernment- not based off of a formula. The thought must not be for the eradication of sin, but for the health of the body as well as the individual. It must come not from a place of discomfort or disgust but from a place of love for all people, not just one’s self and one’s own opinion.
Count the cost, every day.
Count the souls lost to a system that values the appearance of purity more than the pursuit of salvation.
Honest Questions
In my “real” life I’m a bit of a, well, a huge geek. The kind of geek who, as a young child, was caught with a novel tucked inside of her study book in class. The kind of geek who totally understands things like LARP and Cosplay. The kind of geek who not only attends Renaissance Fairs, but does so dressed as a fairy queen, complete with hand-beaded wings. (There is photographic evidence of this, but don’t even think of asking.) I say all of this so that when I use an example from a cult favorite novel of ultimate geek cred in the next paragraph, you all know that this isn’t the least bit out of character. And I really would have to stretch myself to think of a better example.
Enter the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a truly genious work not only of science fiction theatre, but as a commentary on the human condition. There is a passage that describes the creation of the Ultimate Computer- The Computer that is made to answer the great question of life, the universe, and everything. Crowds gather anxiously to hear the summing up of everything they want to know. And the computer answers, “42.” The crowd is aghast. 42? What kind of answer is that? The computer, Deep Thought, responds, “now that you know the answer, you need to discover the true question.” What is the great question of life, the universe, and everything?
This passage came back to me a few days ago, when I was contemplating a question that I contemplate often. This is the question: When is it ever reasonable to kick someone out of church because of a sin they aren’t leaving behind? See, every time something like homosexuality is brought up and I lay out my fundamental argument in support of embracing gay people, this other question is inevitably thrown back at me.
I say, “if being gay is really a sinful thing (a postulation I have deep issues with in the first place) and a gay person is embraced, discipled, and seeks after God’s hearts- it is unnecessary for us to offer conviction of their sin- God will do it himself.”
People respond, “but at what point is it reasonable to expect someone to cease to be gay? What if it never happens?”
I think that, like in the case of the answer of “42″, is not answerable as such. It’s not the right question, and thus any answer I give won’t be the right answer. What people are really asking is, “when is it okay for me to not like their being gay? To bring it up? To make them stop? To kick them out if they won’t?” And if that isn’t what they are asking, then what they are probably asking is, “what if they never cease being gay and I have to confront my own preconceptions and face the fact that maybe I don’t have faith that God would convict them or that it is even necessarily sin?”
These are huge questions to grapple with. Ultimately earth-shattering questions. And it’s no wonder that instead of asking the questions that their subconscious narrative is screaming, people instead content themselves with asking a question that demands a more succinct answer. The only problem is that I, like Deep Thought, can’t answer the question they are asking. I have to answer the question they aren’t, the question they have yet to realize. Instead of saying, “five years seems like enough, or maybe ten,” I have to respond more honestly, “what happens if they change in all ways aside from being gay? Would you ever be able to accept their faith as genuine if they are still a homosexual?”
The answers to those questions can be heartbreaking.
But yet, they are important questions to ask.
Feathery Tendrils of Joy.
While my last five posts don’t lead directly to my present life, I find it impossible to write about the last four years with any clarity. Did I make it back to the arms of the church? Yes, I did. The various church relationships I’ve cultivated have led to happiness and broken hearts, discipleship and loss of faith. I’ve seen young kids ostracied for questioning their sexuality, I’ve seen parents blame the youth leaders for circumstances outside their control, I’ve witnessed as person after person applauded a sermon about “24/7 spirituality” only to leave the trappings of their faith at the door. But that’s not all I’ve seen- I’ve also seen churches rise en masse to help the needy, I’ve seen volunteers show up in such great numbers that they had to be turned away. I’ve seen lives changed because of the faithfulness of friends. I’ve seen pregnant teens struggle with the consequences of their choices, learn new maturity, find the Father’s love in the wake of their own broken hearts. I’ve seen loss of faith and faith regained, brokeness and beauty.
I’ve learned to feel joy in my faith again. Part of the reason it is so hard to write about is simply because joy is insidious. I believe that there are times where people change overnight. I have met people who can give incredible testimony of God coming into their lives and changing them so radically that their friends could no longer recognize them. But is that how it normally happens? No. We go through situation and situation, mountain and valley, drought and monsoon. Somewhere along the way the change happens- but oh so slowly. Just like aging, like the metamorphosis of a butterfly, like carving a statue out of stone.
Somewhere along the journey I felt the tendrils of joy creep back into my heart. Feathery and fine at first, but it grew and grew. Somewhere along the way I saw how I pictured myself changing. I started to feel more sure, more positive. I went from questioning my call to proclaiming it. And parts of what I was meant to do I simply stumbled into by chance- like the time I wrote an “open letter to the church on homosexuality” on my blog, which earned me a never before seen sixty comments.
Somehow I ended up here, writing this to you. I’m not entirely sure how or even why- I’ve guarded my own story closely on this blog. Yet one day I felt a nudging, the kind of nudge I’ve learned not to ignore. So I gave away my secret faith.
I hope it helps you.
My Crisis of Christianity
I spent a long time angry at God because I was angry with other Christians. I couldn’t understand how, if they spoke to God as they seemed to, and heard from God as they claimed to, they couldn’t understand God’s heart for other people. How could God let Christians get away with the kind of cruelty they espoused towards others? Towards me, my friends, strangers whose stories I’d heard? Christianity seemed, to me, to be a big farce. A way of slapping an “I’m okay” sticker on people’s most virulent behaviors. It was okay to gossip in the name of God, judge in the name of God, castigate in the name of God. It was okay to torment people as long as you were doing it to save them!
There had been a time that I had embraced the Evangelical lifestyle. Handing out “Jesus Pamphlets” at the park, demanding that my friends recognize and leave their sins, burning all my non-Christian music and trying to read the right things. The thing was, it made me miserable. I had gone from a suicidal depression into a grudging last-resort relationship from God. And that depression had deeply colored the way I viewed God. I had seen God as wanting my life, but wanting it because he was the possessive Jealous God of the Old Testament. I didn’t truly understand God’s love for me. And the Christian lifestyle I’d adopted seemed to reinforce the idea that God didn’t particularly care for me. Living without all of the things I loved- my fantasy novels, my music, my pride, my inert sense of what was and wasn’t appropriate behavior at the park… These things all were impossible for me to deal with.
I took to forcing myself to live with Christianity with the same kind of zeal I attacked everything in my life. I viewed my distaste for the lifestyle I was living as a challenge, a test of faith. Sarcastically saying “Jesus is my boyfriend” as a way to justify my inability to have a relationship with the opposite sex was supposed to fulfil me. I didn’t confront the fact that I ran away from relationships because I was terrified- I justified it with my faith. Burning all of my old music and devoting myself to only pursuing what was “good and holy” was supposed to reinforce my devotion to God. So burn the fact that it was leaving me bored, that all I had to listen to was what I saw as falsely cheerful tripe. It was supposed to fulfill me, so it would. I would “fake it till I made it” if it killed me.
And by the time I hit my late teens, it was certainly killing me. I was back to listening to the music I liked. So DMX and Staind and Nirvana weren’t on the approved list? Oh well. I was back to wearing the clothes I liked. So tight tops and black lace skirts and leather knee high boots and pink hair weren’t a good Christian look? (Not to mention the huge tattoo on my lower back…) Oh well. So being depressed and angry at God and thinking “Jesus will never fill this emotional hole in my gut” wasn’t the right attitude towards God? Screw it. So refusing to Evangelize and telling the people I was hanging out with that I didn’t care how they felt about Jesus, that was their business, is shirking my Christian duty? By the time I started wrestling with that one, my attitude was to reply, “F*** IT. I want to be able to be friends with my friends, get out of my faith. I don’t want to talk about it!”
And for several years, I confused the above with having a crisis of Faith. But, in the end, it wasn’t really a crisis of faith I was having. It was a crisis of Christianity. There is a famous Buddha quote that reads: “Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.” That quote affected me profoundly. So many of the tenats of faith I’d been raised with simply went contrary to my internal compass. And who gave me that compass? Who gave me my conscience? Would God have created me to react so adversely to Christianity if he wanted me to be a Christian? What in the world was going on here?
Then I realized something else. The Bible has this to say: (Romans 2:14-15)- Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. This verse has been used, for some time, to demonstrate that God guides man’s law by guiding his heart. That written inside of each one of us is a code that can guide us to God’s heart for our lives. And I, by trying to be what other people percieved as a Good Christian, was denying that code. I was denying who God made me to be by trying to be who other people wanted me to be.
What I needed to do was seek after God’s heart for me, to leave behind the trappings of the Lindsey of Old and just try to be the best disciple I could. But not a disciple of the church- a disciple of God himself, of Jesus.
(to be continued…)
Jesus and Me plus nothingness makes three.
By the time I turned nineteen, I didn’t discuss my spiritual life with anyone. I was fairly certain my family wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t have many friends that I felt comfortable being honest with. Just a few years ago I was the one leading the prayer groups, I was the one leading the Bible lessons, I was the one answering other people’s questions. A spiritual crisis seemed like the kind of luxury I couldn’t afford. The friends who did know that I’d given up on church mostly commiserated. We were a rag-tag group of kids who had often had our faith questioned because of our appearance, or our choice in music, or the friends outside the church walls we chose to keep. But I didn’t really even talk to those friends about what I was doing to keep myself going. Studying Buddhism? Taoism? Wicca? I was the one who may as well have had “Jesus is my boyfriend” tattooed on my forehead for most of my life.
I wasn’t sure that anyone could understand what I was going through. I didn’t even understand.
I would practice yoga. Not just the exercises, as was quickly becoming fashionable, but the spiritual lifestyle as well. Focused thought, strength of center, guiding your bodies internal energies. It made sense to me. It seemed to be working. Day by day I wasn becoming less scattered and panicky, more in control not just of my body but of my emotions as well. I would meditate on nothingness. This was an interesting practice, as my brain is hyperactive, and clearing myself of all conscious thought has always been nigh on impossible. But I would light a candle and focus on the light inside the light. I would sit, for hours, trying to empty myself. It was my time alone, my secret. I really didn’t even talk about it with my husband.
And slowly, over the course of years, I learned to be quiet. To listen.
In the meantime, I worked on my relationship with God. I wanted to trust him, I wanted to trust Jesus, I wanted to walk into a church on a Sunday morning and not feel horribly out of place. Yet the times we did go to church I still felt like a charlatain. I didn’t like other Christians, and it bothered me.
In the quiet of the morning when there was no one in my world but myself, I would become empty. I would become the flame within the flame, pure potential. In this place of silence I would feel something that I had never before felt so keenly: Love. Love in its purest and simplest form. Love that exists for no other reason than itself. Love, which like God, proudly proclaims “I am that I am.” End of question.
I became absolutely sure of three things: God is love, Jesus is the embodiment of that love, and those who live in that love serve God.
Yet I couldn’t seem to conquer the pain that was eating me alive. I couldn’t find the words to express it, but I felt betrayed. Broken. Misused. I had given God my life out of bitterness and despair, and up until that point my relationship with him had been defined by that. I felt no joy- I felt hope, but no joy.
(to be continued)
How Buddhism led me back to God.
When I was in my late teens, heading into adulthood, I was unsure of myself. I wasn’t sure about my spirituality, or how I felt about my family, or what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t even entirely sure that I was sane. I went through a period of intense questioning. My biggest questions were about God. Who was God? Was God really even there? If God was there, was he a good and loving God or some cranky guy in the clouds with a big stick and a score to settle?
What was the real point of Christianity? If someone asked me my opinion of church, I wouldn’t equivocate. I would smirk and say that it was a load of crap, that I had other things to do. Church made me feel guilty and dirty and even more unsure than I already was. I saw people getting joy from it and I hated them, I hated myself for not feeling what they were feeling. The only thing I did know with any certainty was that the status quo wasn’t working.
So I gave up. I stopped going to church. I stopped reading my Bible. I stopped doing everything. I started buying books about the Dalai Lama and Taoism. I read about Wicca and elemental spirituality. I buried myself in hope- hope that even if everything I grew up believing was wrong, that there was still some essence of goodness in the world, that there was still something I could connect myself to, to give myself purpose. Here’s the thing: I never questioned if there was some higher force or higher power. I was sure of it. And even at my worst, I still believed in a kind of god. That god just wasn’t the God of Christianity. Or, at least, that’s what I thought.
Because my God was a loving God. He was compassionate and tender. He didn’t want for people to suffer, or be judged, or be tossed aside. Yet the way I saw God’s name being used seemed to say something different. People used God to set themselves apart, to judge others, to justify their bigotry. And I couldn’t let myself believe in the same God they did.
I found a lot of the elements of the God I sought after in Eastern Spirituality. Here were systems of belief based off of truth and observation. They talked about a natural order, an observable rightness, aligning one’s self with the right patterns in order to be whole. They talked about how man kills himself with anger, judgment and bitterness. How pain is not your enemy, but a way to find truth. They talked about how the greatest good comes from sacrifice. And as I read these words, I found myself thinking, “isn’t this Jesus?”
Jesus spoke in the same sort of parables as the Dali Lama. He spoke observational truth. His words rang true because one could watch the world around themselves and see the evidence. He cautioned against anger, bitterness, judgment, and idleness. His death itself proves that there is no power greater than sacrifice. And certainly he didn’t view pain as the enemy if he was called the “man of many sorrows.”
I had an epiphany. No matter my contentions with the church, everything brought me back to Jesus. And I felt sure that I could embrace all that I loved the most about Buddhism and Taoism while still following God: mastery of one’s will, one’s body, one’s emotions, self-sacrifice… these are concepts that are very at home in Christianity.
(To be continued…)
There are no blue birds.
To introduce the need for critical thinking and the scientific method, my Psychology professor stood up and proudly proclaimed that there are no blue birds. Of course this was answered by the laughter of the classroom. But my Professor smiled with grim determination and reiterated his point, asking if anyone could prove that blue birds exist. Show him a picture of a blue bird? Clearly it was doctored. Explain to him about the millions of eye witness accounts of blue birds? He equates it to mass hysteria, much like leads to belief in the existence of the Abominable Snowman or like creatures. Ask him to go outside and see the blue birds in the flower garden? He simply states that such an action would be pointless, as surely the birds are not truly blue- for there are no blue birds.
Once the class started to get really irritated with him, he launched into a long speech on how science is not about explaining what you percieve to be true, but studying all available facts and seeing if you can be disproven. Proving that there are no blue birds requires searching for evidence of their existence- evidence that is overwhelming- thus immediately disarming you of the need to prove you are right. Clearly, you are wrong. And while my professor’s example was a ridiculous one, meant to grab our attention and not chosen for it’s applicability, the concept holds water.
And I find that as childish as my professor’s argument was (clearly!) that truly intelligent people show the same niaveness and ignorance of their facts in their own arguments. Often. A few examples:
- There is no God. Christians suffer from mass hysteria. Any anecdotal evidence to the contrary is coincidental, baked, or insignificant.
- All gay people were sexually abused or otherwise traumatized. Any that don’t remember abuse are hiding from the truth. Others who don’t remember abuse and aren’t deluding themselves are only gay to be fashionable, or out of rebellion, or because they are weak willed and were forced into it.
- All gay people had parents who were distant or ineffective or not devoted enough to God. Any who claim otherwise were probably abused or something.
- If a woman works outside of the home it will cause irreparable damage to her children.
- A child has to have a father figure to be well adjusted. For that reason, a woman has to remain married to the father of her children, no matter how he treats her, as long as said father is not abusing the children.
- Gay people are not capable of raising well adjusted children.
And I could list this stuff forever, really I could. There’s no limit to the amount of false, indefensible assumptions that people make. And most of them carry some grain of truth, just enough truth that a person can grip onto them like a pit-bull and never ever let go. Some of what people argue as evidence of God in their life surely is anecdotal coincidence. Certainly some gay people were abused, or had poor parents, or were just “trying it on” and grew out of it- but the existence of those stereotypes doesn’t mean that there aren’t real, valid experiences that fall outside of those boundaries. And while some children may have suffered being raised by single parents, there are other children that may have suffered more due to a parent staying in a relationship to avoid the possible damage caused by leaving.
All one must do is open onesself to the possibility of being wrong, and one discovers a whole new world. A new breadth of experience and possibility. A world in which one is challenged, one fights to know the truth. And sometimes we discover that we are right, that when we engage in an honest debate all the challenges to our ideals are silenced. Sometimes we discover that we are wrong- and isn’t that okay?
Tomorrow I’ll write more about my own journey of questioning my faith, but for tonight I’d like to leave you all with a question:
Can you intelligently defend your beliefs? Or if someone holds up the metaphorical blue bird, do you stubbornly say “surely that bird isn’t blue.”?
Avoiding Hell looks like Hell on Earth.
What is more important: that people experience God’s love, or that they leave behind their old ways?
In my opinion, that’s actually a false question. I think that people cannot leave behind their old ways without experiencing God’s love, and if they truly experience the love of the Father they will gladly follow him- thus leaving their old ways behind them. I’m deeply disturbed by evangelism that focuses on Hell and punishment as a way to guide people away from sin, and not God’s love. I’m even more deeply disturbed by the impression that the prevalence of such language gives people who do not truly understand Christianity.
People hear that the point isn’t about living a full and happy life: it’s about avoiding punishment.
People hear that the reason to follow God isn’t because one loves Him, but because one is afraid to do otherwise.
People hear that Christians are afraid- afraid of sin, afraid of the consequences of sin, afraid of people who sin.
People hear that there is a fear of temptation, and thus a need to be cloistered.
People hear all of these things, and what is the logical conclusion? That faith is a prison. One lives behind the steel bars of Righteousness, wearing the garish red of Christ’s blood, unable to walk outside the walls of Christian living. That anything other than the routines of faith, the words of faith, the actions of faith means certain doom. People see this prison-faith and they think that Christians are the ones who need saving- that fear is used to subjugate and dig in the checkbook, that the pastors of megachurches grow fat and rich off of the fear of their congregants.
No wonder Christianity is “despised” by contemporary media- if one looks at history, fear and mass hysteria has led to some pretty awful things. But is Christianity really as bad as it may appear? Certainly in some cases it is- I’ve been to churches that felt like a prison, churches where even talking about the latest book or movie was frowned on as “idle chatter”. But is that what faith is really meant to be? What God wishes for us?
I don’t believe it for even a second. I think of God and think of joy and life, happiness, bliss, the reward of leaving sin behind isn’t avoiding hell: it is felt every day in my life right now. It is about strength and sureness, it’s about the peace that comes from knowing why you are here and what you are meant to be. It’s about the security of knowing that you are loved and cherished, that you are wanted. That you are needed. It’s about walking side by side with brothers and sisters who care about you, who would sacrifice for your sake and you for theirs. It’s about living a life of giving, about seeing the world around you become a better place. Now read this paragraph again, and then picture what people who have never experienced genuine Christianity think of it.
Evangelism: we’re doing it wrong.
Don’t mock my brother. (That’s my job!)
Here is something I find interesting: when a non-Christian mocks any Christian, other Christians (even if they do not share the view being mocked) will take this as an affront to the religion as a whole and they will stoke their righteous fires. But Christians feel free to mock other Christians without viewing this as an affront to Jesus (so long as they are mocking another Christian who doesn’t share their views).
Examples? Mainstream Christians joking about the Amish. Or joking about tree-hugging hippy-dippy Christians that “compost for Christ” har har har. Or liberal Christians joking about conservative ones. Or the constant infighting between Republicans and Democrats, who all too often seem to lose all respect for the FAITH of their counterparts just because they don’t share political views. Or any time people joke callously about a particular theology, completely oblivious to the fact that someone in the room with them may still share it. A good example of this is women who will mock the concept of being submissive to their husband- how hurtful is it for another woman who still holds that belief as sacred to hear herself being categorized as a lobotomized extension of her husband’s will?
How odd is it that if a non-Christian were to say “hey, hippy, are you sure you’re high on God and not the special cookies?” all Christians in the proximity would call to arms, but when a fellow Christian does it, it is iron sharpening iron?
I think it’s the same mentality that allows a big brother to mock his sister, but punch another guy in the face if said guy does the same.
Or, more accurately, situational hypocrisy.
Something to think about. I think we all do this- not just Christians, but any time there’s a bubble culture it takes on that kind of tone. A “we can rib our own but you stay OUT” tone.
Humanity is so fascinating.
