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.
