The Long Hard Road

 

The “church” has a long, hard road ahead of it.  But as you look at the words in the Bible, we, as Christians, are promised that long, hard road.  It’s really difficult to watch so many who have come to the conclusion that being a Christian is only about being “blessed.”  They drive fancy cars, struggle with first world problems like lines at Starbucks or whatever their trendy coffee shop is, they have to wait for something.  (Full transparency: I bought a “fancy” car this year.  This is after driving vehicles dated 1996 and 2001 for many years, and after a 2017 purchase which proved challenging for my back. This new fancy car helps me be able to drive and travel without pain.  So yes, I drive a fancy car- it is a Toyota and love it and am grateful for it.  But I work my tail off for it.) These are not the struggles we are guaranteed in the Bible. Not by a long shot.  What we are promised is a long hard road of self-discovery, redemption, continual transformation, AND… hold your horses here… having the world look different than you might want.

What does that look like?  It looks like having a policy you might not like. It looks like swallowing the fact that after Roe, the Southern Baptist Convention took no stand against abortion, and even, eventually coming to the 1971 Christian Life Commission’s statement, “work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

It looks like choosing a leader based on the person and not the platform. Why? Because God’s concern is with our heart.  We all know it is a heart issue. 

 Matthew 12: 34 “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Proverbs 21:2 “All deeds are in the sight of the doer, but the Lord weighs the heart.”

Proverbs 4:23 “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

Proverbs 10:11 “The mouth of a the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.”

If you voted for a platform or a party over the person, I’m sorry, I truly am. You’ve been misled into believing that it is what God would want from you.  Faith informs your values; your values inform your politics, no matter how hard you want to separate it. We are triune beings:  heart, soul and spirit.  Everything we do is informed by those 3 things.  Which means, that every leader is informed by the same things. 

It looks like when “your guy” is losing, putting on your big kid pants and acting like a grown up, instead of throwing temper tantrums and waging war on democracy by filing frivolous, unfounded, unsubstantiated lawsuits that get thrown out over being ripe, moot, or having zero actual factual basis. 

It looks like supporting your COUNTRY over your party.

It looks like prioritizing all life, unborn all the way to that of the men and women who sit on death row.

It looks like loving and respecting someone who might look different than you do; love differently than you do; live differently than you do.

It looks like taking a stand for what is true, and honest and right.

It looks like losing friends over taking that stand.

It looks like not going to Christmas with 30 other people because what is right is for us to hold our horses and think of people other than ourselves.

It looks like leaving a church denomination that has prioritized their world-view over what is happening around them, ignoring the damage they are causing by their lack of love in action to others.

It looks like having church in your living room to keep others safe.

No political party is going to stop God.  He’s been around a lot longer than our completely failed two party system.  Just because one party is fighting for the religious liberties of a religion you do not claim, does not mean that your religious liberties are being trounced upon. 

We are not promised the easy road.  We are promised the long, hard road.  We are promised the Refiner’s fire.  Please Lord, burn away my dross.  Let me become more pure, truer, and more beautiful in your eyes.  And if I may be so bold, please continue to burn away the dross of our nation.  We are desperate for true authenticity.

Citizenship May be in Heaven, But Our Job is Here

This is going to rub a lot of people I know the wrong way, but it has to be said:

Your citizenship may be in heaven, but God put you here for a reason-a job if you will.  That reason is to show his love to other people.  That reason is to steward the earth he created.  This requires that you stand up for truth.

Jesus did not blindly follow the government.  In fact, to the contrary:  Jesus pushed back. He pushed back against oppression. He pushed back against government corruption. He pushed back against self-serving dictators and those who would grab power by any means necessary to advance their own agenda.

This morning my heart is grieving more than it was in 2016.  No, the election is not decided and I am mildly hopeful that Joe Biden will be elected.  The reason I am grieving so deeply is that there are too many Christians who are taking the easy way out: following a person who says what they want to hear about abortion.  Do not include religious freedom in this conversation, because you already have it.  The Constitution does not guarantee only the Christian faith freedom or freedom from other religions, it guarantees freedom OF religion, for everyone.  Period.

This morning my heart is grieving because Donald Trump claimed victory with the election not even over.  Millions of votes, legally cast, have yet to be counted and his declaration is that he would gather his team of lawyers to STOP the counting of votes, because he didn’t want a ballot found at 4am to be counted.  I am embarrassed on behalf of our country that this kind of behavior is supported by so many.  Had he wanted them counted before midnight on Election Day, maybe fighting against early tabulation was a bad idea. 

My heart is grieving because so many Christians have put the issue of abortion above religious freedom of people who think differently than they do, above decency, honesty and truth.  My heart grieves that so many Christians ratify the behavior of someone they would not let teach Sunday School, and yet elect him as president!

You are here, on earth, for a finite number of days.  God has made exceedingly clear that you are here for a purpose.  This means, that “heaven is my country and God is my King” is great and wonderful, but you have a job to do here on earth.  That job is to live truth, boldly.  That job is to push back against that which is not true, decent, honest and loving.  This means that your job- and your employer is God- is to love the heck out of others, regardless of if they are gay, straight, transgender, black, white, brown, immigrant, asylum seeker, homeless, poor, rich, middle-class, republican or democrat.  That doesn’t mean “convert” them- that means love them, where they are.  Jesus did this if you need a reference.  He said to come and follow him.  Then he brought them into his life.  Then, in their time, they came to him.  And even if they didn’t “convert” guess what, HE STILL LOVED THEM!  If you are voting for a leader who doesn’t subscribe to that mentality, then you need to check your job description and make sure you’ve read it right. 

The Comback of Authenticity

When I was in college I visited several churches in the area to find the church I would attend when in Auburn.  By default, since I was going to a Baptist church in Birmingham, I visited a Baptist church in Auburn. I had been for a handful of Sundays when, one week, the end of the service came early and some semblance of a meeting occurred.  The pastor announced that there was a member of the church who had been confronted about something “they” as church leadership (all men) did not agree with. I cannot recall if this member was a man or woman.  There was to be a vote, that moment, on whether or not to essentially kick this person out of their church.  I sat there dumbfounded, mouth agape, heart pounding, hands tingling and tears forming in my eyes.  The vote passed. This person had been excommunicated from this church.  Of note, that person was not in attendance to my knowledge, and given no opportunity to speak to his or her brothers and sisters in Christ about this.  None.

I left that church and but for a few events the church held for the college ministries (ie, locations not hold things, nothing to do with the actual people in the church) and the university choir concerts which were held there along with other locations, I never set foot in those doors again.

This was over 20 years ago.  I was really only about 2 years into being a Christian, but had been in the church my entire life.  There was one thing I was absolutely, without a doubt certain about:  that was wrong and it in no way showed the love of Christ.  Even now, as I write about this, my hands are sweating and my heart is pounding at the absolute hypocrisy it took to tell someone who didn’t meet that group of male leadership’s expectations of what a member of the church should look like.

At that point in time, my life experience level was relatively low.  I had been born and raised in Alabama, and thus my experiences were pretty much all southern.  Climate change was “global warming” and either completely ignored or called falsity by the church.  There were very few openly gay people around. There was a very minimal Latino community.  The internet was pretty new. I had not been taught more than about a paragraph in my history books about the Great Migration. For me, the civil rights era had been over long before I was born.  Little did I know the fight for civil rights would still be an active conversation today- and necessarily so.  My world was small, as any 18 year-old’s is.  But then, even then, in my very limited existence I knew that this action did not smell like love.  It did not reflect the Jesus I knew.  It looked like judgment and it smelled like hate.

Even now, this same thing plays out repeatedly in our daily lives.  Don’t agree with someone’s opinion: defriend them, kick them out of your circle, “ghost” them.  Honestly, I have experienced some of that recently and part of me is livid over the immaturity of the actions, yet part of me has to laugh at the same thing.  At 42, still dealing with people who act like they are 14.  Sheesh.  If someone loves someone of the same gender, some churches refuse to dedicate their baby because of this.  Is this intended to slap the adults in the face?  Isn’t the church about love?  What about that baby?  Get your head out of your self-righteous behind and look up, because I am 100% certain, the authentic Jesus, the one in the Bible, the one who came as a propitiation for our sins- us- even us as distasteful as we have become- Jesus came because of LOVE.  You can’t get past them loving someone of the same gender, but it’s completely okay with you for God to send Jesus to be crucified by those he came to show love to.  Get. Your. Head. Out. Of. Your. Ass.

Recently I got a lesson a strange place.  My husband I had been watching something on Netflix.  I will take a pause here and say this: I have been divorced and am remarried to a wonderful man, and yes I am talking about Jesus because guess what, God can use anything or anyone he feels like.  I love God and he loves me and he can inspire me left and right. I am NOT disqualified because of sin anymore than anyone else is. For anyone to say that is full of crap, because we are ALL sinners. Every last one of us. 

My husband and I were watching a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode the other night. (Yes- we love it.)  It was the second part in a story about Worf.  He had been advised that his father was still alive in a Romulan prison camp on a remote planet. He of course must go.  When he arrives, he finds Klingons and Romulans living together in peace.  If you know anything about Star Trek, this in and of itself should be a lesson.  What ends up happening is that over the years, the group living there had somewhat warped the traditions of the Klingon culture- watering it down and not telling the children about their heritage.  They did it for their own good, or what the leadership thought was their own good.  What Worf brought was the authentic Klingon culture to this group of people and it shook things up. Eventually some stayed behind but the majority of the young people left to search out their authenticity.

It got me thinking, is it time to leave the over-traditionalization of some churches to seek out what authentic faith and authentic Jesus looks like? I am not saying we “leave” the church- meaning we stop being a part of a fellowship. What I am asking is if it is time to start to question the traditions made up by church leadership “for our own good” when it means excluding people and thus throwing love out the door?

For me, my prayer is that authentic Jesus makes a comeback.  Well, authentic Jesus never left.  Maybe the desire for authentic Jesus needs to make a comeback.  My prayer is for discernment over the world’s version of what Jesus was- and to instead be able to see who authentic Jesus is.  I don’t think an authentic faith in Jesus or authentic Jesus could disappoint anyone.  I do think the world’s version of faith can.

The Normal October Thing

 

Yesterday, on my run past my son’s elementary school, I noticed a group of kindergartners frolicking in the leaves, kicking and tossing them, laughing and “wee-ing” with such delight.  I thought with a sigh- something normal, finally.

Then that afternoon, my sweet 8 year-old son paused on our walk home from school, scooped up a bunch of leaves and tossed them in the air.  Giggling and laughing he repeatedly threw them up in the air smiling from ear to ear.  I, of course, grabbed my phone hoping to memorialize this normalcy in a world where normal has no definition. 

I began to look for things that earmark normal in my life:  dog meeting us at the fence in a complete frenzy for my son to arrive home from school; snack; homework and the push back I receive to do it; dinner preparation; cleaning up; laundry; lunch preparation; getting ready for my son to go to sleep; reading- our nightly must do; prayers; holding hands for about a minute before he drifts off into a land I hope is full of leaf tossing and smiles.  Thank heavens for these moments of normal.  The rest of the days really are not are they?

Daily we watch the Covid numbers in our area, hoping not to see a spike.  Each evening I review my emails carefully to make sure there isn’t something new and different that will affect my son’s school day or my work day.  Habitually, I check Facebook or Twitter, which has a two-fold effect: make me laugh or make me furious.  It used to just make me laugh or smile, and maybe think.  Now it just infuriates me.  Is the fury the new normal?  I hope not, please Lord, no. 

Admittedly we are in a period of our lives and in history that is unprecedented.  We are, as a country, ten months into a pandemic.  Today, Johns Hopkins provided numbers of nearly 215,000 of our fellow country men and women have died from this virus.  This virus complicates what would normally be manageable underlying conditions. This virus aggressively attacks the healthy and the weak, the young and the old, men and women.  Every single piece of our population has been affected.  We wear masks in public.  Our children can’t play with other classes outside.  Our children are somewhere between traditional school week to fully at-home or “virtual learning.”  Some of us are working from home exclusively, some partially, while others not at all.  “Front line” has a new meaning. It is no longer relegated to our military forces, heaven bless them, who have for centuries been on the front lines of our freedom. It now, as it maybe should have always, encompasses teachers, retail workers, fast-food workers, sanitation workers, those in the healthcare industry.  “Essential” employees have been re-defined.

This is not the normal we are used to.  Are all these things the new normal? 

We are in a country so divided people hate one another for a difference of opinion, defriending them because they either cannot stand the vitriol or are so vitriolic themselves that they cannot NOT say something vile.  We are so divided that families cannot productively discuss what is arguably one of the most pivotal elections in our nation’s history.  We can’t ask tough questions for fear of retribution or excommunication. 

I don’t know how to fix it. I have suggestions, but those are just that, my suggestions.  Maybe they’re good, maybe not.  Maybe they fit for some, maybe not.  I don’t know.  I can share them, but then honestly, I do have a quiet voice in the back of my mind (okay, sometimes it is loud and shrill) that I will be questioned as a Christian by some or questioned as educated by others.  Is what I have to say even valid or important?  Is the risk I run worth it to share my thoughts?  I realize opinions are like armpits (thanks Dad 😊), and they all stink a bit.  However, if no one ever shared their opinion women couldn’t vote, people would still own slaves (a practice so abhorrent it makes me even question our deserving to even live on this gorgeous planet), we would not have been to the Moon, there would be no rovers on Mars, we would not have airplanes- the list is endless.

If someone didn’t share their thought or opinion, we’d not be where we are.  Which can be bad and can be good.   

So here are my thoughts:

Our country is broken. Our hearts are broken. Our systems are broken.  Our relationships are broken.  We need to lament this and let it move us towards love. 

Just like every one of us, our country has the capacity to be great.  But it takes work.  And that work is hard.

You cannot love God and hate others.  You cannot.   

Even the darkest, longest night has to end.  Sometimes it is a rude, uncomfortable awakening.

We will struggle with an intense and passionate dislike for someone or something.  It is not okay to harm others. 

YOU ARE ENOUGH.  You are enough no matter your color, your religion, your gender identity, who you love, or where you live. You.  Are. Enough.

We are all imperfect.  THAT IS OKAY.   

We are all works in progress.  Every last one of us.  Give people as much compassion as you can muster.

Truth is worth the risk.  It is worth the sacrifice.  It is worth stepping out of your comfort zone to follow it. 

“The truth may set you free, but first it will shatter the safe, sweet way you live.” (Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

Thinking back, a lot of these things should be normal.  So - I will hold on to the image of my son playing in the leaves, giggling, the normal October thing to do.  I will hold on to these thoughts, because they are truth and therefore, should be normal, and one day, even though it may hurt, the truth will set us free.  We just have to be willing to do the hard work.  That means it will absolutely be worth it.

Smells Like Jesus

 “And after looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.”

                                                                                    Mark 3:5

Hardness of heart.  I have heard the phrase since I became a Christian.  Even before then, as I attended church, I heard the pastor mention this condition but really never understood what it looked like until this present era.

“Hardness” in Mark 3:5 is “porosis,” and to be honest, the definition made me chuckle.  It is derived from the word “poroo.”  Hardness means callousness, blindness, or stupidity.  Stupidity.  Stupid.  How I have worked on preventing my child from calling someone or something stupid, but here we are, with Jesus being grieved at the Pharisees’ stupidity.

For context, it was the Sabbath and of course, the Pharisees were trying to catch Jesus in some scandalous act that they could use to discredit him.  When he encountered a man with a withered hand, Jesus merely says, “stretch out your hand.” The man did so, and his hand was restored.

We could dive into the folly of adhering to a “law” that had been initially implemented for virtuous reasons but has been overly traditionalized to being ridiculous.  I can think of the strict constructionist view of the Constitution, which if it were taken as it were written at the time, would prevent me, as a woman, from owning property or voting, and essentially making my life about being at the beck and call of my husband, silencing the voice that was divinely given to me by my Creator.  As a woman, personally I don’t understand how a woman can adhere to that paradigm, but that is a discussion for another day.

What we are truly looking at here is that Jesus was grieved at the “stupidity” of the Pharisees.  How grieved must His heart be now that he sees how we are acting toward one another.

Alexia Salvatierra mentioned something along these lines on the Ally Tour tonight:  If it doesn’t smell like LOVE, it doesn’t smell like Jesus.

I John 4:11 “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

If we are going to love God then we have got to love other people.  This argument is easy for me when I am trying to convince someone that we are stewards of the whole world and that those people who are seeking asylum are there for us to love.  This argument is easy when it is about giving equality and fighting for equality for those in the LGBTQ community, for men and women of color, for the disenfranchised and marginalized. This argument is easy for me, and truly, it ought to be for all of us.

This argument is so freaking hard when it is pointed toward those who are racist, homophobic, defenders of bigotry, misogyny, lies, bullying, deceit and manipulation.  Do not get me wrong: I hate and am fully in the right to hate racism, homophobia, bigotry, misogyny, lying, bullying, deceitfulness and manipulativeness.  But that person- That person who is struggling with these things for some reason I cannot know or comprehend- that person- was made by God.  That person was made in love.  That person was made to love and to be loved. And as much as it is the most difficult thing on the planet to do right now, we gotta dig deep and try to speak to each other in love.  Even when that comes when the things we hold most dear are the things they fight hard to tear down.

We have got to old on to the truth.  The truth will not break.  It can be pressed on from every angle and the truth will hold up just fine.  We know the truth is what authentic Jesus has shown us.  That love is the job.  Love is the reason.  Love.  If it doesn’t smell like love, it doesn’t smell like Jesus.  Thank you Alexia for that nugget.