For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, I’ve decided
to start a blog. I’m not a noted
thinker, theologian, philosopher, songwriter, beer/coffee snob or
musician. I’m all of those things, but
none of them are showing any signs of being particularly worthy of
recognition. I have a lot of thoughts
and questions and ideas, but don’t feel like everyone in the world needs to
hear them. I do however occasionally have thoughts that I
like to ramble about, and it seems like a blog is a good place to ramble for
those of us who can’t actually tell when people have stopped listening
(apparently when people say they like the guitar you’re playing, they don’t
actually care that it’s a 1993 Gibson Les Paul Custom Premium Plus, and you’re
dreading the day that your brother decides he wants it back).
A couple things happened today that have my mind spinning in
all kinds of directions. First, my
amazing wife told me about a conversation she had this afternoon with a
classmate. I don’t want to use her real
name because she has a right to some privacy, but I just wrote this part
entirely referring to her as “this girl” or “classmate”, and that was just
ridiculous so I’m going to call her Sally.
Sally is going in tomorrow to get the results of some medical tests she
had done three weeks ago; to receive either very good news or very bad
news. I don’t know exactly what the situation
is, but she told my wife that it is at least potentially a life or death
situation. That was troubling enough
even before she said she was going by herself.
My wife’s family is not from this area and misses them desperately, so
when she heard that Sally has to deal with something like that alone she assumed
that Sally doesn’t have family in the area and her heart went out to this girl
(I had to leave one in). She was utterly
blown away when she was told that her Sally’s family is all in the area, but
they don’t care. And yes, that’s exactly
the phrase Sally used – they don’t care.
I understand that not all families are the same and don’t
all have the same values, but I’m fairly certain that there are things we can
all agree are completely unacceptable and heartbreaking, and this is one of
them. The home I grew up in could be pretty
dysfunctional at times and left me with some baggage, but I can’t imagine
having a health problem that might kill me and having to deal with it on my own
because my family’s just not interested.
I can’t comprehend my brother or my sister leaving me a voicemail saying
that he or she might only have a few months to live…and not bothering to return
their call. My heart breaks for Sally on
several levels…how many people have abandoned this girl? She goes to a Christian university and lives
in the dorm – there’s nobody she can turn to, nobody that she can ask go to her
appointment with her? I realize that a
warped family life can lead to a lot of warped views regarding God and
relationships, but as the body of Christ it’s our responsibility to reach out
to people that have been marginalized, mistreated, and abandoned. And how many more Sallys are out there, in a
city like this with a church on every corner?
I want better than this for Sally, I want better than this for Grand
Rapids, and I want better than this for Jesus’s church.
Which brings me to the second thing that happened
today.
I grew up in a church that highly prizes accurate and
biblically consistent theology. If you
go to a church like the one I was raised in for more than a few years, you know
all about the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, have probably read at
least part of the Canons of Dort (I made it through the first page-and-a-half,
and skimmed the rest) and almost certainly think that dispensationalists are
crazy. But sometimes when so much
attention is paid to fairly abstract principles – and let me make the side note
right now that by abstract I absolutely do not mean unimportant – too little
attention is paid to how you actually live your life and the way you view
others. The disturbing tendency among many
people whose theology I think very highly of is to be very concerned with being
correct and very unconcerned with being compassionate. I saw many acts of kindness and consideration
in the church I grew up in, but I also saw a large number of people looked down
on, judged and marginalized – especially people who didn’t fit the proverbial
mold either theologically or behaviorally.
I received an invaluable education in theology and ethics and I
understand (or at least think I understand) a lot of things that I would not
have learned apart from God choosing to use that church to teach me…..but I
also know a lot of people who came away with some pretty deep scars and not
much else. Because when you have a high
level of theology and a high standard of holiness (like God does!), but don’t
have an understanding of what it means to unconditionally love and accept
someone for who they are and where they are and then help them to grow to where
they need to be, people get hurt. I
should also say that this church had a lot of problems in it when I was younger
that by God’s grace they have repented of and moved away from. I’m not saying that as Christians we should
ignore, condone or enable sin, but I am saying that we need to be very careful
that we clearly understand and express with the things that we say and the
things that we do the idea that a person’s actions or comprehension of biblical
truth are not the things that define their value, and that at times we
absolutely need to be able to say to a person – believer or unbeliever – “I
cannot accept the things you are doing.
They are wrong, they are harmful to you and they offend a holy and
righteous God and if something doesn’t change here you are going to suffer some
consequences that are so horrible that I can’t describe them, but I absolutely,
unconditionally love and accept YOU.” Every
human being has value, every human being has dignity and every life that is
lived without Christ and every death that takes a person into an eternity
without Jesus is a tragedy that we should want to tear our clothes and weep
over – especially if we had an opportunity to tell them the truth and didn’t.
The reason for that entire rant is that girl that I grew up with
at that church who had an extremely difficult childhood due to some things that
happened in her family and in the church recently announced that she has “deconverted
from christianity”. I have not heard her
full story because some of her blog posts are password-protected and I don’t
yet have the password (I requested it immediately before writing this), but I believe
that she has suffered immensely in her life and has been very mistreated by
people who claimed to be Christians. I
believe that she has seen few examples of what a life changed by the Gospel can
and should look like, and has come to believe that the message of Christianity
is a lie, and I am very deeply saddened by this.
I feel like the church has failed both of these women. Part of the beauty of the Gospel is that if
we have a physical family that isn’t what it should be, we get another family. My wife and I are incredibly blessed by our
church, and our small group really does feel like a family gathering. We’re hopeful to introduce Sally to New City
Church and get a chance to be the family that she doesn’t have. For this other friend, I’m hoping to
reestablish contact with her and her husband and see what God does.
The message and mission of the Gospel is one of reconciliation. We’re reconciled first and most importantly
to God, but also to each other so that we can have the relationships we were
meant for in the first place. Let’s go
be witnesses of this reconciliation and walking illustrations of the
unconditional love and acceptance we receive from our great Father.
