Rethinking Our Mission

I used to be a little bit (not a lot, but a little bit) judgmental of people who presented faith in a way that was too friendly. I mean, I’ve always wanted faith to seem approachable. I’ve never wanted it to seem like it was hidden behind a gate that only “the good” could get past. But I’ve always felt like accountability was important. I never cared for approaches that seemed to overlook the importance of things like accountability, confession, and the like.

These things are still important to me today- but I’m thinking about them a bit differently. I used to think that people wouldn’t hold themselves accountable…that we needed someone from the outside to remind us of the things that we needed to confess or take accountability over. This is what is changing for me. Over time I realize that most people are *very aware* of their struggles, shortcomings, character flaws, or misgivings.

Because of this, I no longer think we should be demanding people spend more time thinking about their flaws. I think we should be encouraging people that it’s okay to be flawed and that, if we support each other, we can move past them.

Again, it’s not that I don’t think accountability and confession are important- I’m just rethinking what they look like. I think we need both. But I think we first need an environment where we feel free to look inside and share without fear of being excluded.

To be continued…

Practicing Unconditional Love

You must love in order to be loved. You must be inclusive in order to feel yourself among the include. You must give in order to receive.

Cheryl Strayed

I am so surprised by the universal feeling of being odd, uncool, set apart. I scroll through Facebook and see all these perfect families having their amazing adventures and I think - “Wow, they must be a really put together family.” Maybe there are some of those out there.

When I get to know families, even the ones with the perfect family photos and the amazing destination adventures, I have not yet met a perfectly put together family. Hope springs eternal I guess, but I wonder, especially during this time of chaos and upheaval and crisis, if there might be another perspective to consider.

If Jesus and his community had the internet, there was a young man who surely would have been an instagram influencer. In Mark 10, this influencer shows up and asks Jesus, quite dramatically on fallen knee, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus takes some offense to being called “good” by this young man and reminds him of the ten commandments. Which, according to this young ruler, he has kept since he was a boy. Maybe I’m reading something into the text that isn’t here but I hesitantly observe that Jesus has easily welcomed women and children, the demon possessed, and a woman my mother would refer to as a hussy. But this young man? What happens to him? This guy with his sense of righteousness and wealth? What does Jesus do with him.

He loves him. Jesus also suggests he sell all his possessions and give them to the poor! Head bent in sadness, the young man walks away. In fairness, we do not know what the young ruler chose to do. Maybe he eventually did just as Jesus asked. We do not know.

But what we do know is that Jesus was an inclusive kind of guy. He loved the rich and poor, the slaves and free, the Greeks and Jews, the naughty and the nice.

What if we decided to follow that example and love one another all willy nilly? We could stop fretting over who agreed with us or who loved us back and we could just love people. We could love them whether or not they pose on Facebook or shun Facebook. We could love our friends and our enemies. There might need to be some follow up conversations as to how that will look, but wow - I imagine they would be far more interesting then some of the conversations we are engaging in as of late!