A Little Bit Like Jesus

I think my daughter's dance studio might look a little bit like Jesus. In fact, I think it might look more like Jesus than my church. Oh, I know it's not a perfect analogy. The dance studio isn't a suffering messiah, isn't resurrected, isn't the first-born from the dead. But in the ways that we're called to embody the love of God in the world, well,  it does a pretty decent job.

I've always suspected that the community it created was in many ways as "authentic" and "intentional" as those ideal Christian communities some of us postmodern Christians are so fond of discussing. Sure, there are mean people, gossip, and general imperfections, but for the most part, when it comes down to it, there's a lot more acceptance, sharing, and compassion. . When someone get sick or faces a crisis, everyone chips in to make meals and offer support. Older kids look out for younger kids. People feel responsible for each other. And everyone gets to be part of the family...even noisy little siblings and kids who aren't a part of the competition team.

The other day, I walked into the studio office and overheard the one of ladies in charge passionately setting forth her philosophy that, if nothing else (and I'm paraphrasing here, because I have an imperfect memory and it would have been weird if I had been taking notes), "This should be a place where every child walks in the door and knows that he or she is loved and accepted. Every child knows that no matter who they are or how they're treated anywhere else, they have a place here." Let the little children come. And that's exactly what happens. My daughter's classes contain children with disabilities, kids who have never danced before, kids who have been bullied, and kids who might tend to be the bullies. And they're all working on something bigger together, learning that they belong and that they are loved (no matter what)...and learning to love in the process.

I wish I could overhear something like this at church. But most churches seem much more interested in deciding who to keep out. There isn't a "no matter what" clause. It's like we're afraid if we embrace people like Jesus did, things might just dissolve into anarchy. It's like we say that if we love and welcome every person touched by sin or brokenness (all of us), we'll have to give up the things we believe and care about, like radical love is somehow a threat to our community and our faith. But of course it's not. Radical love is our faith. Mercy, compassion, sacrifice, helping each and every one of ourselves follow faithfully in the Way of the One who loved to the point of death is our religion. And if we forget that and focus instead on rules, regulations, committees, and how we look in the eyes of others, we might as well stop going to church altogether. Because that's when church stops looking a darned thing like it's following Jesus.

I'm not saying that behavior isn't important. I'm just saying we have it backwards. In order to create seemingly perfect communities where everyone is behaving the "right" way, the church has a set of beliefs potential members must claim they accept (this may involve not thinking very hard, lying, or painful cognitive dissonance on the part of the "believers"). Then there are the rules and regulations to be followed and the requirements to be met. These keep the church looking/feeling holy and perfect. Those who can't/won't adhere to these rules or meet these requirements are either cast out or relegated to the periphery. Of course, not every sin or blemish is on the list. Usually, the ones that are enforced are the ones that make the majority squeamish. Because, of course, if we enforced all the laws of holiness, there would be no one left. Once uniformity has been achieved, the church seems perfect. Seems perfect. It looks like everyone is behaving, because not everyone is present...and "behaving" is narrowly defined. People don't have to grow in faith or love because, theoretically, they already achieved it before they ever gained full admittance.

The reverse of this process goes like this: You are embraced. You are loved. You buy into the idea that love is the way things should go. You invest in the community of people who also want this. The community is messy and full of real people--all kinds of real people--and so everybody grows, everybody sacrifices, and everybody learns to love well. Good behavior (when it happens) is the product of love, and grows into more love.

In my daughter's gymnastics class is a little girl with Down's Syndrome. She is, of course, a bit different than the other kids in terms of her sense of boundaries and the way she socializes. I watch my daughter, who is kind of young to totally understand this and who really loves her rules and regulations, struggle as her patience is tried when this girl interacts with her in unexpected ways. But my daughters knows that in that place everyone belongs and everyone is loved (my rule loving daughter, the girl with Down's Syndrome, my tantrum throwing younger daughter, the little kid who shoves her fingers up other kids' nostrils...everybody). So then I watch her learning to be patient and compassionate. I watch her work on growing in love and self-control. And watching that is way more amazing than watching her work on cartwheels.

Does this method make for a sleek dance studio where no one's toes are ever sickled, the office runs like clockwork and every dance is exactly right? Nope. Does this method make for a very shiny-looking, perfect, efficiently-run, impressive church? Nope. This method looks messy and disorganized and real.* Kind of like Jesus' followers. But the Spirit moves through this. And you can tell. You really can. There's a sense of heart, a passion, a life that comes through that's more enthralling than any set of fouette turns (although her studio has plenty of those, too).

*This is not meant to imply in any way that this is how the dancers look...just how the process looks.

We need to stop worrying first about how we look. We need to stop trying to create the perfect institution, the perfect business, the perfect group of people. We need to follow Jesus' command to love one another. We need to give life and have life to the full. It's not shiny, or sleek or exclusive. It's not uniform, or efficient, or highly marketable. It's messy and ragtag and beautifully life-giving. And if my daughter's dance studio can do it, then the church should be able to do it, too.

It and Them

We haven't joined the mega church. But we still go there. Call it a senseless, fatal attraction. I desire its demise, or at least a general overhaul of everything it is; it seeks to assimilate us and our young. And I say "it" because, as with most institutions, this thing is bigger than people. It looms large over and above the collective of individual souls that are associated with the denomination/building/organization. And, as with most institutions, this is a dangerous scenario. When we hear about the "Body of Christ" we think of something greater and more able than any one individual, and we are often willing to hope that this body an even transcend the collective of individuals, that it can become something greater, something more, something powerfully spiritual. And I believe that sometimes it does. 

But the flip side of this is that, more often than not, the institution begins to become something more than the collective in terms of its power, but something very much less than the collective in terms of its spiritual discernment, compassion, and mercy. Imagine if the Pharisees had a well-managed childcare, fair-trade coffee and someone paid to manage graphic design...kinda like that. The system itself, the rules, the traditions, the regulations, the policies that govern the day-to-day running of the joint, take over. Heck, the money takes over, the desire for a good image, the longing to increase "numbers", the ensuing marketing campaigns. The thing runs itself, and the humanity gets sucked right out of it. And it becomes less. And you can feel that lack. It's enough to make you want to overturn tables and rage against the status quo...but of course, you're not exactly the Messiah and you'd probably bring your own self-interestedness into it and mess it all up...or maybe that's just me.

It's funny, because I get the sneaking suspicion that many in the church spiritual leadership feel exactly the same way. Maybe it's because I catch them sneaking moderately progressive theologians like Brueggeman, and N.T. Wright, and Campolo into their sermons. Maybe it's the subtle way they manage to almost say as much on the simulcast screens that I watch as I sip my coffee and settle into my uncomfortable chair. Maybe it's the look in their eyes as they cautiously navigate criticism by those who are heavily invested in the power structure of the institution, i.e. those with the power to end pastoral careers. Or maybe I'm delusional. Regardless, based on what they say, they're attracting a certain demographic of intelligent, critical, unconventional individuals, and they don't seem too upset by that. They seem--dare I say--glad that we are there. 

But the thing is, the newbies they're attracting aren't always joining up. We're not a generation that likes to fully submit to much, and swearing that we'll submit to a board of governing elders is, well, just a boldfaced lie. Add to this our--often fully warranted--wariness of alarmingly large institutions and you're going to get lots of young, vibrant, excited people that show up for a while, refuse to sign on the line (we think we'll lose our souls...I'm not saying that's rational, by the way), and then leave when we either:

A) Do what we do as a generation and become unsatisfied with anything's ability to fulfill us and shop around for something different (after all, we're very used to being marketed to at every turn).

B) Are rejected/feel rejected in any number of dehumanizing ways for violating often-superficial social mores, despite the fact that every sermon, every song, every message we hear speaks boldly to the opposite of the praxis of legalistic judgement and boundary-protection. 

C) Become infuriated watching spiritually vulnerable person after spiritually vulnerable person be cast out or driven off in this way while we become ever more deeply complicit in this creation of outcasts by our mere presence and our cacophonous silence.

Even if we did join the church, this doesn't mean we'd be able to affect much change. After all, we don't control the purse-strings and we probably won't for a very long time (if ever). Most of us still live in our parents' basements. Plus this thing is bigger than us anyway...bigger than all of us. It has the power to reject without compassion, to judge without mercy and to exert itself relentlessly in the name of God while doing the very things that Jesus was not-so-subtly against. The bizarre thing--the thing I really don't understand--is that I am still somehow drawn to it. At least, I'm drawn to the people inside of it. The people that seem to be thinking and loving and existing as people within it.  

It's not the "it", it's the "them" that gets my attention. It's the "them" that draws me inexplicably to the periphery and sometimes--oddly--to the center of this giant, bureaucratic thing. And "they" are lovely, and broken, and scared, and striving, and power hungry, and rejected, and self-righteous, and desolate, and vulnerable, and self-absorbed, and selfless, and legalistic, and compassionate, and infuriating and funny and--here's the really crucial part--longing. They are longing. Me too. Because we're people. And we happen to be people who recognize that we're not whole, that we need something more. 

I fear many of us (unconsciously) hope to find this something more in it. But lots of us know we won't. Because we're people. And "it" doesn't care about that. But maybe we'll find something more in us as the Body of Christ. Because we care that we're human. And God cares. And God will deal with Pharisees, and turn tables, and endure the wrath of the institution to save our precious humanity. And maybe sometimes we should too. Even if we're not members. 

Outcasts and Rejects

I know this should be obvious, but I just wanted to point out that Jesus was a big fan of rejects. He really liked to hang out with the people that were outside the accepted cultural boundaries of the day, the ones society/religion had a distaste for. You know, prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, poor people, people of different races, women who slept around, people who weren't as chaste as they probably should have been, etc. And he wasn't so into the guardians of the social order. The people that drew and protected the cultural boundaries (the boundaries that they saw, of course, as moral and religious imperatives) were high on the list of people that Jesus liked to tick off. Jesus embraced, welcomed and loved the outcasts and had a less-than-favorable view of those who would create outcasts.

I know, I know. This should be basic, obvious stuff. But apparently it isn't. Because recently I've been surrounded by the church's outcasts. And it turns out that there are a lot of them. And they are sad, and they are vulnerable, and they are angry, and they are ready to give up on church and sometimes even God, altogether. And I don't think this is what the people of the church generally intend. But it is what's happening. And it's happening all over, to lots of people. I'm aware that, as with anything pertaining to human beings, the church will sometimes unintentionally hurt people. People will feel rejected and leave, even if no one ever meant to leave them out. This is as inevitable as it is sad. But the thing that really breaks my heart is that it's institutions that exist in the name of the rejected One, the One who welcomes outcasts, that write into their very rules ways to create outcasts from the most spiritually vulnerable and hurting people in their midst. Something is dreadfully wrong when those in spiritual leadership feel that their hands are tied when it comes to allowing the church to express mercy and grace because the rules of the institution simply don't allow it.

Now, rules and boundaries--humbly held with the awareness that we are human and we are bound to misuse them at times--are not in and of themselves terrible things. But rules and boundaries that reject people are. Rules and boundaries that put themselves and the institution that created them before people are. Because rules and boundaries can do justice but they can't do mercy and grace. And if I rightly recall, Jesus was all about the mercy and grace. Rules and boundaries can do accountability (in a warped way), but they can't do love. And if I'm not totally mistaken, love was the thing that Jesus consistently commanded people to do.

I humbly propose that if the evangelical churches of the world would like to increase their numbers, or at least, stop losing young people (and we all know how very much evangelical churches desire to increase their numbers/stop losing young people) they should do their best to look less like boundary-loving Pharisees and more like outcast-embracing Jesus. This is dangerous and scary of course. But following Jesus probably should be. These churches would also stop losing the vibrant, exciting, passionate, sensitive, and intelligent faith of the people that might not look exactly like what a church person is expected to look like, but who love God with a beautiful and deep love born of the experience of pain or the experience of living on the periphery.

And again, I'm aware that this isn't anything new. It's not anything theologically nuanced, or subtle, or cutting edge. It's basic, basic, basic. Numerous books (some intensely theological and some utterly fluffy) have recently been written on the subject. But apparently it desperately needs reiteration. Jesus loves the outcasts. So the Body of Christ probably shouldn't be in the business of creating them.