A disturbing trend…

There have been many times in the past few months that I have thought of completely leaving social media, well Facebook.  I lay the blame for this consideration squarely at the feet of Christians.  Well okay not just at their feet, I also lay some of it at the feet of panderers, you know who I mean the ones that post ultimatums about who their real friends are, the fact that many times the people who post these ultimatums also happen to be or claim to be Christians leads me right back to the whole I lay the blame of being ready to give it all up at their feet. 

On any given day when I check out either of my Facebook feeds, yes I have two one for professional use and one for private use, I am overwhelmed by the number of “friends” who practice what I think I’ll start calling American Jesus Guerilla Warfare, I also come across several people who have swallowed the religious right’s vitriol hook line and sinker, and then of course there are those that are more concerned about their constitutional rights than they are about people who are lost.  Equally disturbing are the people who feel it’s their duty to prove their particular point of view regarding scripture is the correct one.  It’s really no secret that my faith has been evolving and changing over the years, things that I was sure of 10 years ago are not not so clear.  I personally think that’s a good thing, it makes me push deeper into scripture, attempt to find out what the actual words used mean instead of what they are interpreted to mean, and really wrestle with some things that used to seem easy to understand and now are grey areas.  ( I have always said that I feel there are grey areas in the Bible, something that has always put me at odds with most Christians I know and have been or am friends with.)  Now don’t get me wrong,  the reason that there are grey areas in the Bible has everything to do with humanity and nothing to do with God.  Here’s the thing humans rarely get it right when it comes to interpreting God.  The problem is the recent trend I see coming from friends, friends of friends, and religious leaders. 

When I look at the life and words of Jesus, and the life of the early church leaders and compare them to American Jesus and popular pastors there is really no comparison.  Persecution was to be expected, in fact more than expected it was to be welcomed with joy. 

James 1:2 (NLT)
² Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.

That’s counterintuitive to western pastors and Christians, when troubles come our way we don’t consider it an opportunity for joy, we look at is as a call to arms.  An opportunity to stand up for our rights.  Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, yet we would rather put up our dukes.  American Christians have anointed the republican party as Jesus party, yet if we would admit to it, Jesus had the most criticism for people who cared more about personal rights, and personal wealth than he did for the people who recognized the need to be actively involved in reaching out to people who were disenfranchised and didn’t have the right upbringing, or know the right people to have any real say in the way the known world was governed.  I used to tell a buddy of mine that Jesus was a Socialist, mainly to spark debate, and while that’s not really a completely accurate label to place on him, there are views of socialism in his words and work, the problem is whenever humans get their hands on one or two concepts that form a way to live a life that is worth living they will corrupt it. 

The thing that disturbs me the most is the fact that so many people blindly follow whatever a religious leader says as long as they slap a Bible verse on it or say “God told me.”   That’s the problem though.  It’s much easier to find someone you agree with, and then follow along blindly, forgetting to dig in on your own, to find out what the context is, to learn and ask questions, and make messes in our faith.  What happens when you struggle with what you believe, when you ask the questions you’re not supposed to ask and then dig for the answers can be frightening, mainly because it has the potential to set you at complete odds with the people you grew up with, the people you love, or the people who are supposed to know the truth. 

If we take seriously what Jesus said was the most important thing, loving God and Loving others, then our interactions will by necessity look different.  The place where this falls apart for humans is at the loving others part.  It’s easy to love God in some ways,  there is not real interaction there beyond prayer and reading the Bible, some would argue that church attendance proves that I love God but to me that’s more of a way to prove to others how committed I am.  It’s harder to love others, because others are here and can be interacted with.  Others have the potential to hurt our feelings, or to cause us heart ache, or to not love us back.  Jesus tells us that’s the most important thing that we can do though, love.  If that’s the case why do Christians spend so much time doing other things?  Again referencing social media, I find Christians taking sides against each other on all sorts of issues, debating things like the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the importance of creationionism the true meaning of Hebrews 1.  

Equally disturbing are the friends that have taken up the cause of the NRA as something that Jesus would do, pushed for prayer and other “Christian” things to be placed in our schools, and attacking our president and members of congress and the supreme court who are not from “Jesus” party.  Christians are more interested in fighting the good fight when it comes to traditional marriage, than they are with loving God and loving people.  It disturbs me that the litmus test for true faith has become where people stand on these issues as opposed to how much they love and serve.   

Matthew 7:20 (NLT)
²⁰ Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

If I apply this verse and the ones before it to what I read and see from so many “Christians”  I fear they are missing the point of what Jesus told us to do.  In our zeal to be right, we are leaving out the fact that we were never really told to be right.  We were to to be salt, and light… Paul became all things to all so that he could save some.  The American church has told all people to become like them so that they could be saved, it’s twisted but it works, it sells books, and gets likes, and gets re-tweets and plays well to the chosen few.  Meanwhile people who are lost are looking at the church as a club that they don't’ want to join because they could never possibly fit in with a group of people who knows it all and can’t stand to be around anyone not like them.  A group so insulated from reality that when the do poke their heads up it’s to tell everyone how wicked and evil they are, how much we need to get back to the principles that we were founded on, and how we should stand up for what’s right and true and honest. 

I’m disturbed because so many of us are “taking a stand,” but we are forgetting this warning. 

1 Corinthians 10:12 (NLT)
¹² If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall.

I guess the most disturbing thing to me though is how easy it is for me to fall into the same traps.  Far from being a member of the card caring religious right, it’s easy for me to discount everything they say, to try and poke holes in their theology to condemn them for not living the way I say Jesus lived.  It’s disturbing to realize that I too do the same thing that they do.  I’m all for reaching the lost and the hurting, to being a pastor who is willing to listen and dig and read and walk beside anyone no matter who they are as long as the who they are is not one of those people who are so obviously bigoted and wrong and narrow minded.  In my zeal to get people on the right to realize that whosoever means whosoever, I forget that they are in that group as well.  It’s an over correction on my part and it’s hard to admit that I’m like them, and in saying I’m like them, I’m putting us on opposite sides and starting the whole process over again. 

The thing is the cornerstone of our faith is supposed to be grace,  it is because of God’s grace that we are saved, and it is with that type of grace that we should handle each other even when we disagree. 

Oh grow up!

It took me forty years to grow up, if I had done so sooner life would have been so much easier.  I used to think that being grown up meant that you hit an age.  When I was younger I always looked toward the next milestone.  I wanted to be double digits, then it was being a teen, then it was being 16 so I could drive, then it was being 18 legally an adult, then 20 because for some reason 20 meant I was more of a grown up.  Then came 30, I thought 30 was grown up, and as my 30's began to trickle away, I found that the elusiveness of feeling like a grown up was still there, and as 35 turned to 36 and then there was 39 and it was a year till 40 and I still had a few things that needed working out in order to feel like a grown up...

Things that did not make me feel like a grown up...

1.  Getting Married.

2.  Graduating college.

3.  Getting a "real job."

4.  Buying a car. (several by now have been bought)

5.  Buying a house.

6.  Having children

7.  Going on a real vacation with the kids mentioned in number 6.

These and myriad other things are supposed to make a person feel like a grown up, or at least are supposed to be signs of being grown up.  The problem is they really don't mean that you are grown up at all.  For some reason we look at milestones in life and assign huge meaning to them, and sure sometimes that makes sense, and I would never discount anyone's accomplishments, mine included, but doing grown up things doesn't necessarily make you a grown up.  Watch any episode of 16 and Pregnant and you can see that principle played out on a regular basis.

Something happened when 40 hit though.  I wish I could put my finger on exactly what it was.  I think it had to do with a few things though.



 

 

Reading that verse always brought to mind toys, and games, and frivolity for some reason, but more and more in the last couple of years I have come to the realization that it has so much more meaning than the obvious.  When I think and act and speak like a child, I have a decidedly me-centric view of the universe.  This translates several ways and across many different aspects of daily life.  My outlook has shifted in many places and ways,  I think more about the people around me, how my action and inaction affects them.  I think of that with my family, and with friends.  I look at what is needed more than what is wanted.  I don't make nearly as many unilateral decisions any more.  So sure those are ways to put away childish things.

I  stopped trying to shoehorn myself into a profession that was obviously no longer a viable option for me.  Sure there are youth pastors that are over 35, successful ones, called ones.  I always fancied myself as the eternal youth pastor.  "I'll always be relevant." except I'm not.  I keep up with trends, I read, I listen, I watch I observe, but there comes a point when some people can do all those things and still remain engageable, and some can't.  I obviously couldn't.  This became clear during one of those vacations I talked about earlier.  We were at a water park.  There were all kinds of cool slides,  I love roller coasters, water slides anything that goes fast and does loops all of it, usually.

There was this one water slide that Amberly really wanted to go on.  We began climbing the steps to the top of the slide.  Let me explain.  One of the "draws" of this slide was a surprise factor.  You entered the tube and stood on a platform, the operator closed the little gate behind  you and you stood on said platform for whatever duration the operator saw fit, he or she would then push a button, and wammo the platform would drop and you would shoot straight down till you hit the curve of the slide.  I looked at it, and at that moment realized...I don't have anything to prove any more.  Sure there was a time that I would have done it because I had to show people I wasn't afraid, that I could do anything, fill in the blanks.  That day I just didn't care any more.  I cheered my daughter on, explained that if she wanted to do it great, but that if she didn't that was okay.  She asked if I was chicken or something like that, trying to goad dad on,  I'm ashamed to say there was a time when I would have said oh yea watch...to my kid. I looked at her laughed and said, I don't really have to prove anything any more.  Walking down the steps I saw a couple of other people doing the same, one guy and I looked at each other laughed and said, nope I don't have to do this to prove I'm grown up or a man or whatever.   I'm pretty sure that was the beginning of the realization that no matter how hard I tried, the relatability  factor was gone on some level.

Still putting away childish things is so much more than that, especially when it comes to the spiritual side of life.  I hate to admit it but there was a time when I blindly followed along behind all the people I was supposed to blindly follow along behind.  It's easy to do.  Many people in Christian leadership today are what they are because it's what they are supposed to be, and they know what they are supposed to be because their pastor, or college, or parents told them what they are supposed to be.  "true christians" are supposed to be republicans, they are supposed to be against "the gays" against teen mothers, against any religion that isn't the true American religion... They are supposed to be for prayer in school, and for hating Muslims because didn't God say wipe out and utterly destroy people in the Old Testament?  They are supposed to be for gun rights, and free speech, as long as it's their speech, prayer in schools. Homeschooling is the preference, as is the right to refuse to be vaccinated.  As a kid there was a chore list that had to be completed, you could check off the things you had done and see how right you were.  Do the chores, and there was a reward, don't do them and there was punishment.  I fear that many people in America, many of my old friends, have this view of christianity.  They take the chore chart, or the list and if they can check off the boxes the right way then they are good christians who get to go to Heaven.

The problem is that kind of faith is not all that personal, at least to me it's not that personal.  The more I age, the more I realize that there are so many things I had wrong.  So many issues that I took for granted because I let other people tell me what it was supposed to be.  Being a grown up means a faith without a check list.  It means looking at someone who isn't supposed to be able to be in a relationship with Jesus, someone who isn't supposed to be able to claim Christ until they change and realize that they just may have a deeper relationship with the one who Died for us than I have.

If we look at the way Jesus lived, the people he talked to, the people he loved, and lived with and reached to, we don't see that many religious people, and when some of the people who he hung out with tried to get all religious he told them to back off and stop making it so hard for people to have a relationship with him (Acts 10:9-16)  Okay not in those words but what he did say was don't tell me something is unclean if I say it's okay.  Far from being an excuse to sin, I see that whole exchange as God saying to religious people that we really don't get it, that whosoever means whosoever, and that if we would spend more time loving people the way Jesus did, talking to people like Jesus did, and serving people like Jesus did, God will  do what He promises through the Holy Spirit, he will begin to mold them and shape them and remove the things that need to be removed, he will bring conviction where it needs to be, and he will bring joy when that is needed, and peace where it is needed, and well you get the point.

For me putting away childish things, leaving it all behind happened when I began to realize that I don't have to do the checklists to be a Christ Follower, I don't have to build check lists for others, I don't have to try to convict someone of their sin.  It's not my job to "save" a person.

If I am willing to live Gods word in front of people, if I am willing to show who Jesus is by walking with them, sharing their pain, celebrating their successes and giving them the truth even when it isn't comfortable to do so, then I've left behind the check list christianity, the childish form of christianity that is all about the rewards that come from a life of faith and I've grown up.  I've put away the need for constant affirmation, for a much deeper more meaningful life.

Sure there are times I want to hear hey good job.  There are times that I see someone walking down a path that I know is going to lead them farther away from God than they should ever be, and in those times it's so much easier to tell them what they are doing is wrong, than it is to walk with them and live in community with them, and earn the trust that they need to have in me so that I can with Love, and compassion and grace try and help them find a way back to relationship with God that is more about being like Him than it is about getting the blessings that come from doing things the right way.

When a group of lepers came to Jesus to be healed only one came back to thank him.  Tradition tells us the one that returned was a Samaritan.  The other nine rushed off to fill in the check boxes that would let them rejoin society,  the one that came back and thanked Jesus was told to go his way.  I always looked at that as an indictment on the other nine but more and more I see something more important playing out.  We know that when Jesus came the old way of doing things was going to be removed.  The old covenant was not going to be needed, the old commandments were going to be changed to a new one.  We know this and what I see in that one guy returning and Jesus telling him to go his way, is a really neat picture of what a living moving breathing adult relationship with God is all about.  No longer do I need to seek approval from the people in charge.  I don't need to be told i'm doing okay by a pastor, or a leader of an organization.  I am now a grown up, with a grown up faith.  Grown up faith is scary.  Putting away the childish things, the checklists and rules, and regulations, means I have to deal with the hard stuff, I have to face the fact that Jesus wants more out of me.

Sure there are days that I look back and wish for the ease of a blind faith that was easy.  Then I see what happens with that kind of faith, and I watch as people are turned off from God because of that type of faith and I turn around and get on with being a grown up.

 

See ya around the blog.  As always comments are encouraged...

The Next Step...

If you are in or around the Baltimore area or know anoyone in or around the Baltimore area, this is where Locust Point Community is heading.  If not I would love some comments and thoughts...

If We Build It
Time is precious; once spent it can’t be recovered.  Trite, sure, but true nonetheless.  Locust Point Community UCC is in an exciting time, and we want you to join us for what’s next.  Better yet, we want you to tell us what’s next.  Will you give 4 hours one month to build the church you would attend? 
Jesus was an intense guy.  When he walked the earth he turned all the religious conventions on their head.  He changed the way people talked to God, how they interacted with God, and how they treated each other.  He broke down barriers, advocated for the outcast, and called the religious leaders to an accountability that they didn’t ask for or want.  Is it any wonder that they wanted to silence him? 
Religion is one of the most divisive things in our world today.  People use religion to justify discrimination, violence, and intolerance.  “Religion” is not what we want to be about at Locust Point Community.  We want to be Jesus with skin: reaching, serving, loving, caring, healing, holding people accountable, building people, tearing down walls and veils, dealing with the least, the lost, and the lonely as well as meeting with the influential, the wealthy, and the wise.  Jesus did all these things and more.  Carpenter, prophet, messiah, rabbi, teacher, high priest.  At any moment, Jesus was one of these and all of these. If we are going to be Jesus with skin, we need to be ready to take on these same roles, and while no one of us is able to fill them all like he did, as a team we can do great things.
Locust Point Community UCC has been in the neighborhood for more than a century and has no plans of going anywhere any time soon.  We recognize that just as people grow, just as the neighborhood has grown and changed throughout the years, so too do people’s understanding of what church is and what it’s meant to be.  We will continue to offer a traditional service for those that find it to be the best way to connect with God, while at the same time we recognize the need to evolve with the neighborhood.  As the Pastor of this great church, I see no reason why we can’t simultaneously honor the past, and look to the future.
So what does this mean, what’s the catch?  It’s simple, actually.  We want to welcome people who grew up in Locust Point, people who are new to the neighborhood and area, and people who are tired of a church that makes you feel like you have to have it all together, know a secret language, and get all the boxes checked before you can hope to be accepted.  We want four weeks of your time to help us design a new kind of gathering.  Four hours for one month, one hour a week we will tackle some tough questions, give you a chance to share your stories, good and bad, about church, God, and “Christians.” We’ll then consider all of these things, plus a few more, and begin to put together Locust Point’s Community Church. 
Our aim is to be a diverse group of people seeking to follow Christ, living and working in community for a common goal – to be Jesus with Skin. 

Would you come?
What would you want to see in this space?