Sinners

As the years carry on, I’m seeing more and more of my students get out into the world and do big things in a variety of ways. Some of them are getting married. Some are becoming parents. Some are achieving all their hopes and dreams in their careers. I’m really proud of all of y’all.

What I’m not proud of is how some others are responding to you or how I myself would have responded to you in the past. Allow me to explain.

I used to agonize over how my decisions would be perceived by others. I used to sit up at night worrying and wondering whether or not everyone understood my intentions. I was deeply concerned with whether or not they would still like me or be mean to me, if they didn’t agree with my actions. I still hate to be misunderstood, but I’m getting more comfortable with the idea. Mainly, because Jesus was misunderstood all of the time. He was claiming to be the Son of God, but he wasn’t exactly holy by the standards of the religious authorities of his day. He was hanging out with people who would have been excommunicants or who would have never crossed the threshold of a twenty-first century American church. He was accused of being a drunk, over-indulgent, and an all around bad dude (Matthew 11:19, John 8:48-49).

This is who Christians are supposed to be following: the one who said, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). But we’re not exactly being accused of debauchery, over-indulgence, or all around badness. Well, at least not in some circles. Anyone who calls American Christians over-indulgent and all around bad people probably has a point, but they’re not calling us that because of who we’re hanging out with. They’re calling us that because of our obsession with material goods, stinginess with our wealth, and because of who we’re not hanging out with. Jesus was accused of drunkenness, over-indulgence, and all around badness not because he was greedy, stingy, and isolated, but because of precisely the opposite. 

I’m verging on a derailment here, but I think that this is really important to understand: Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, was misunderstood and mischaracterized as a “bad” man because of who he chose to hang out with and how he interacted with other “bad” people in his commuinty. And yet, we, his supposed followers, are agonizing over what people may think about us and our theology if we hang out with the “wrong” kind of people. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to get really specific. I’m probably going to hurt everyone’s feelings, but what else is new?

I have friends with varying sexualities. I have friends with varying marital and relationship statuses. I have friends that engage in illegal activities. They live their lives in ways wildly different from my own. Some of them live their lives in ways that I would deem inappropriate for one who claims to follow Christ. Some of them don’t follow Christ at all. And here’s how the mental gymnastics usually go (at least, this is how they went for me):

If I go to their wedding, does that mean that I agree with their lifestyle? If I send them a present for their baby shower, does that mean that I think it’s okay that they are having a baby when they’re not married? Can I hang out with them and go to dinner to celebrate their engagement? I mean they’re already living together. What if I talk about them too much? Will people think that I love every decision they’ve ever made? I had better start making it crystal clear, every time that I bring them up, that I love them, but I don’t love how they’re living. I should probably not post pictures of us online and/or preface every post with something about hanging out with “sinners” as a part of the way of Jesus. Yeah. That will work. But what if my pastor finds out? What if that person I’m trying to impress at church sees me spending time with my friends? Will they think that I’m a heretic or that I don’t believe that the Bible is true?

I could go on. Seriously. Not just because I overthink everything for vastly different reasons than I’m getting at here, but because I know what this is like. I fought through the tension of the clear call and example of Jesus to live life with people that the religious establishment calls “sinners” or “bad people” and the pressure of that religious establishment to tow a certain ideological line with our actions. That establishment would affirm my desire to follow in the footsteps of Jesus to befriend “sinners”, but not too far. It was critical, to the establishment, that everyone knew that I didn’t agree with these people. It was imperative that I treat them like friends, but not too much like friends because, otherwise, people might get the wrong ideas about me, my theology, and my friends. And, if we’re really going for it, people might get the wrong idea about my church. God forbid.

The goal was to live the lifestyle of Jesus, but also to control the narrative of what others thought about you. We couldn’t have any followers of Jesus getting mixed up with these messy, lost, wrong-living people, much less be revealed as any of those things ourselves. It was all about image and it was just about exhausting. It was like we wanted the best of both worlds - to be following in the footsteps of Jesus and have all the power and privilege that came with being a part of the religious elite. I think this idea is rooted in the notion that America was founded on Christianity and, for most of the twentieth century, the predominant cultural ethic was judeo-christian or biblical. If your culture is “Christian”, then people who live that lifestyle are generally going to be accepted and have power to move and shake the world. There’s going to be little cost to living a Christian lifestyle in a mostly Christian culture.

But. The Millennials. We got ‘em. As we came of age, the culture started to drift away from traditional, judeo-christian ethics and move into more progressive waters. When this began to happen, people who still wanted to live a historically orthodox Christianity, myself included, started to have to make some tough decisions. You could no longer live and can no longer live a faithful, biblical Christianity without cultural backlash in many arenas. This is not “persecution” as some of us love to scream. It has been and is the norm for most of the church throughout the ages. Being deeply misunderstood by your culture because you faithfully walk the way of Jesus is quite literally the way of Jesus.

I just didn’t expect it inside of a church. I didn’t expect it inside of me.

It should come as no surprise to anyone by now that I’m not a fan of evangelical church culture or mindset. It’s really unfortunate that this specific group of people, mostly in the western world, have chosen this good name for themselves. They’ve sullied it for the rest of us in the west who believe in the call on Christians to evangelize the world. They’ve made it a dirty word and a derogatory comment. But to be evangelical, etymologically and theologically speaking, is to bring good news to those who desperately need it. It’s to care for those that no one else is caring for. It’s to bring hope, healing, and light to the pit of despair. Yet, in the western world, “evangelicals” mostly bring death and darkness to those who aren’t in lock-step with their theological and cultural views.

This is the nexus for me. It’s not that the theological views of evangelicals need to be debunked or thrown out the door wholesale. It’s not that the lifestyles of the people that we love shouldn’t be examined or that we shouldn’t talk to them about it, if that’s our place in their life and they’re asking. It’s that orthodox Christians have got to hold fast to their beliefs while finding a way to be more loving. We’ve got to celebrate more. We’ve got to go to the weddings of our friends who lived together before they got married. We’ve got to celebrate the birth of a child, no matter the marital status of their parents. We’ve got to show up for our friends in the LGBTQ+ community when they celebrate their relationships, too. 

And, dear ones, we’ve got to be misunderstood. Celebration is neutered when we preface it with all of our theological ramblings about how we don’t think this lifestyle is ok. Relationships are damaged and our friends are deeply wounded when we show our disagreement with their lifestyle by not even showing up. We like to pretend like that’s loving them because we want better for them, but is it? Is it really loving to not show up? Last I checked, God showed up for me when I was his enemy (Romans 5:8), so I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing skipping out on your friend’s biggest moments, when they could likely use your support and guidance most, because you disagree with their lifestyle. Love isn’t passive-aggressive. “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13:7-8)

Love does not mean condoning every choice our friends make. God is love (1 John 4:16) and he does not do that with any of us. But he does come near. He doesn’t abandon us, even though we abandon him. He is gentle. He is patient. “He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart” (Isaiah 40:11). When Jesus talks about dealing with conflict within a church, he tells his disciples to have three kinds of conversations with the parties involved. It starts off between two people and escalates all the way up to church leadership. If anyone refuses to apologize for and repair their part in the conflict, Jesus says to treat them like a “Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:15-17). In his context, Jesus was basically saying to treat people who fall into this category like they are not part of the church. Many of us have decided that this means that we should never speak to that person again because, sadly, that’s how we treat all the people that we know who don’t believe in Jesus. We don’t associate with them, we don’t invite them into our homes, we don’t share meals with them. We just huddle up in our perfect, never misunderstood bubble and cast anyone who won’t tow the line out of it.

But that’s not what Jesus means. Jesus means that we are to come near to our brothers or sisters who are following him, but not living an orthodox/holy/whatever life and patiently bear witness before them to the goodness of God. We are to be evangelicals. We are to bring the good news, hope, light, and glory, not condemnation.

There are, in fact, some people who we are told never to associate with. The Apostle Paul tells us that we should never associate with people who claim to be Christians, but don’t/won’t follow the teachings of Christ (1 Corinthians 5:9-11). And, before you try to turn this around on me, Paul means people who are not open and honest about their shortcomings and failures (ALL OF THEM) and who aren’t seeking guidance, wisdom, and truth. He means charlatans, frauds, and holier-than-thous whose private life is about as holy as a sewer.

My heart is broken and my spirit aches with the grief of understanding that I used to distance myself from dear friends because I disagreed with their lifestyles. I’m sorry to all the friends that I’ve hurt because I thought that I couldn’t be close to you if you weren’t living the way I thought you were supposed to live. I squashed the mystery of God in my own life and in yours. I was not gentle (let’s be real, it’s never going to be my strong suit). I was not patient. I was not kind. I did not bear witness to the goodness of God so that his kindness might lead you to repentance (Romans 2:4). I was filled with condemnation for you and doubt within myself. I hope that you can forgive me.

My heart breaks and my spirit aches anew each time I see a friend continue to do things like this. I want you to know that I’m not saying that we should sacrifice the validity of scripture or the high standard of an orthodox life on the altar of culture or friendship. Far from it. I believe that we must honor and uphold scripture, ALL of scripture. And that means that we can believe in and encourage others to live a biblical lifestyle while still moving towards those not living one. Jesus did. He was often the guest, not the host, of “sinners” (Matthew 9:9-13). 

Please, don’t make people your projects. Please, don’t disregard any of the scriptures for the sake of your own comfort, ease, or reputation. The stakes are too high. The journey is too long. Let us renew our commitment to love our neighbor as the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable did (Luke 10:25-37). And may all the people know that we are his disciples not because of our holy lifestyle, but because of our love (John 13:34-35).