Redemption, Reformation, and a Revolution

Dear American Church:

If you want to know why your attendance is dropping, I’d love to tell you, at least from my own personal experience.  Because I’m pretty close to walking out on you myself.

Here’s the thing.  I’ve been a Christian since I was very young.  I’ve been going to church all my life.  And now here I am in my early thirties, and I’m about to throw in the towel.  If I hadn’t had an extremely good experience with a wonderful church in Austin last year, I think today would be the day I broke up with church.  And how did I get here, you ask?

Thirty years of seeing the ugly underside of church politics, in a nutshell.

I could tell story after story of how I’ve seen churches abuse their power and shuffle people out of their country-club-type community over the most ridiculous things.  I could talk about how working in a church exposes you to some of the nastiest, pettiest work place politics you will ever see.  I could even give evidence that this is not limited to a particular region, denomination, or creed.  But those kinds of stories—even just the ones from my own personal experience—could fill a book, so I’m not going to tell them all here.

The point is, church is broken.  I don’t care how you slice it, what arguments you make or positive spin you try to put on things, something is not working.  It had a good long run, it served its purpose for many, many years, but the church as an institution is largely failing.  My dad hates when I make sweeping statements like this about the church.  But I cannot find it in me to be less cynical about an institution that has allowed people to insult and slander—him in particular and others in general—time after time without ever making things right.  And today for me was the last straw.

I am so sick of all the petty arguments and politics in the average congregation.  I’m sick of the general attitude Christianity has toward outsiders, and those that don’t agree 100% with all their precious doctrines.  Someone recently asked me if I was “super religious” and I was like, “Hell, no!”  I have been that person; I have looked down my nose at the world for not being as Christian as I was.  And I've been on the other side of it and seen how nasty and un-Christlike that attitude is.  I never want to be that way again.  Because the truth is, attitudes like that have a way of chipping at my soul and my faith.  Honestly, some days I’m not even sure how to be a Christian anymore, and after almost thirty years in, you’d think I’d be coasting right now. 

Actually, I am coasting.  I’m not engaged.  I’m not challenged.  I don’t have people (outside my family and closest friends) who help me figure out where I should be and what I should be doing in life to be a part of God’s restorative, redemptive work.  And that’s something I could really use right about now.  Once again I’m drifting, trying to figure out my next move, and even when I hear encouraging things from the pulpit, I don’t have a body around me that enables me to take the right steps.  So instead I flounder, often surrounded by people who reinforce the notion that knowing God is all about following seven simple steps and a checklist of do’s and don’t’s. 

I had kind of a heart to heart with God today, out in the beautiful Pacific Northwest woods.  I don’t really want to give up; I don’t want to be a cynic.  Maybe it was naïve of me to think that things would get clearer and more certain the older I got.  Maybe I’m foolish to expect the body of Christ to actually emulate Christ.  I have been hurt too many times by the church; my family has been wounded, my friends have been mistreated.  To be fair, we have also, at times, been blessed, encouraged, uplifted, and served by the church.  I’m really not trying to write off every individual in America who attends church.  But something happens when we gather as an institution, an organization.  We’re supposed to be a community, a family—well, families have their problems, too, I suppose. Somehow we end up acting more like a clique, standing in a circle with our backs to the world.

So the thing is, if I’m going to keep believing in and following Jesus, it’s going to have to look radically different for me.  I’m not entirely sure what that means, I don’t have it all worked out yet.  But something has to change.  A lot of things have to change, actually.  And one of the things that bothers me about the American church is how resistant it is to change.  It’s like we’re afraid of losing something vital in the process—but I think we’ve already lost some vital things, and it’s high time we began to recover them.  Things like: loving your neighbor, loving your enemy, and helping the poor. 

So right here, right now, this is my version of 95 theses, nailed to the virtual door of the collective American church.  I can’t keep going this way.  I would rather walk away than continue to be a part of a body that would treat people so poorly.  But as much as I sometimes do want to just walk away, a deeper and better part of me wants to help reform things.  A NEW reformation.  And the thing is, I know I’m not alone in this.  I know older and wiser and younger and more passionate people are struggling just like I am to find their place in the church.  I know of them, and I know them personally.  Together, we can and will enact change on the church.  Because it is time.  The foundations for a renewed way of following Christ are already being laid. 

We are passionate, we are disillusioned, we are ready, we are afraid, we are in love with Jesus, and we love humanity, too.  We want to see the world redeemed and restored through Christ.  We want to be part of his redemptive story.  We want others to see that we are in love with God, which is sometimes hard to show when we are being attacked by our brothers and sisters in Christ.  This is part of the reason we need to stand together.  We need to encourage one another, even when we disagree.  You and I may never agree 100% on all the different theological questions.  But if we can agree on the centrality of Jesus, His divinity, life, death, and resurrection, shouldn’t that be enough to be going on with for now?  We are never going to attract more people to Christ by bickering amongst ourselves and engaging in much of the mud-slinging, fear-mongering, us vs. them rhetoric that has become so popular recently.  Indeed, it is that kind of petty behavior that turns people away from God, and even burns out long-time Christians.

Maybe I’m just a crazy heretic.  Maybe I’m preaching to the choir.  Maybe no one will ever read this and my impassioned words will fall on deaf urls.  But if you are reading this, and you do agree that the time for change is long past due, won’t you stand with me?  Viva la revolution!

Redeemability

I must confess something. When I was in High School, I was…a bit of a prat, actually. Kind of a Goody-Two-Shoes. It’s true. I kind of had to be, just because I lived in California, and everyone else seemed so…well, I want to say “damned,” but trust me, I never would have used that word back then.

I was one of those kids who didn’t believe in Santa Claus, ever, and didn’t celebrate Halloween. I didn’t listen to secular music. I was a staunch little evangelical, and a Republican, to boot. I also disliked peace symbols (a broken, upside-down cross) and yin-yangs.

You know yin yangs—those swirly little symbols with a little dot of the opposite color on the inside of each half? I didn’t like them because I read that they symbolized that there is a little bad in every good, and a little good in every bad. And, being the rational child of modernity that I was (and still am, in many respects) I concluded that this was false, since God clearly had no evil in him, and the devil clearly had no good in him. So. Yin-yangs=taboo.

Even now, I shy away from peace symbols and yin-yangs. But I must admit my feelings have changed a little. After all, outside those two absolutes I mentioned, God and the devil, isn’t everything else in this life kind of…mixed? I mean, even as Christians, as new creations, don’t we still wrestle with our sin nature? And in those who are not yet saved, despite being lost and fallen, isn’t there something that Christ, through us, wants to redeem?

Redemption is a tricky, sticky thing.

It’s one of those things that sounds easy in theory, but is harder in practice. Common Christian knowledge would have us believe that Maturity, growing closer to God, means pulling away from the world. Being sensitive to things that would grieve Him. Cutting out bad things in life. And that’s true—to a point.

Consider, though, that Christ spent his ministry years among the poor, broken, and degenerate of his society. He didn’t keep himself away from all that might taint Him. Instead, He was able to see so clearly and Love so fiercely that even today He is redeeming the Lost.

It’s hard, sometimes, I think, in this world that is so mixed, to find the redeemable. We’d like to draw very clear, dividing lines to say This is Sacred, and That is Secular; This is White, and That is Black, This is Good, and That is Bad. This is Christian; but That is Not. Certainly we have been given standards and rules and guidelines on how to keep ourselves pure and set apart. But when we try to apply these things arbitrarily to something like, movies—for example: Rated ‘R’ movies are Bad!—I think we run into trouble.

Does Redeemability apply only to people? I don’t believe so. I think Christ came to redeem the whole earth. And we know one day, Someday, He will. Until then…what?

Let me first say that I don’t have all the answers. But here’s what I think. I think sometimes we get so caught up in seeing the bad in things that we write them off. We throw everything out—bathwater, baby, and all. I know sometimes it might seem like there is precious little good in something. But I still say you never know what God may use.

This could be said of so many things—situations, movies, books, even people. It’s so easy to disregard something because it looks ‘bad’ at first glance. I’m not advocating filling our heads and hearts and lives with garbage just to sift through for a little treasure. All I’m saying is that it might be nice if we kept our eyes open for the good we can pull out of things. As Arthur F. Holmes says, "All truth is God's truth." He has given us so many glimpses of Him throughout so many areas of life. There are fingerprints of our Creator left on the entire universe. Perhaps we can use those things to point others toward Him.

Just a thought.