What we see Christians doing and saying in the name of Jesus Christ in this country is alarming, frustrating, disturbing and—yes—angering.
I tend to the wounded daily. I see the tears in their eyes and hear the hurt in their hearts. I witness the harm and it crushes me. I’m not exaggerating.
Come talk to me and see the tears in my eyes and hear the hurt in my heart.
I believe that Jesus weeps over the minds and hearts of way too many who say they follow him, as he wept over Jerusalem.
There is an authentic Christianity but I believe we must leave Christendom in its ascendant American form in order to remain Christian.
There is an authentic church but I believe we must leave Christendom in its popular American structure in order to find the church.
There is an authentic God but I believe we must leave the God of Christendom in his dominant American mask in order to follow Jesus Christ.
There’s been so much abuse in the name of Jesus Christ and so many abusers of the name of Jesus Christ.
Week in and week out I sit across from the pain and destruction the abusers have left in their wake.
I get why so many have left the church and left the faith and—God help me—it makes me angry sometimes because what the wounded are leaving is not the credal faith of the church.
No, sir. They are leaving a faith and a God not worthy of belief. I don’t believe in the God or the faith they are leaving behind either.
I weep because the ones who are harmed by Christendom are not leaving the authentic Son of God who makes the world in love, and loves the world that he makes, who becomes what he makes in love in order to lay down his life for the creation he loves so that ALL might live.
This story is what Christians trust, not another story but this story.
But it’s time to pump the brakes, friends.
And here is what wisdom says: authentic Christianity is the defeat of rage, the conquering of frustration, the end of fear, the beginning of understanding, a kingdom of peace, the capacity to love.
What I am describing is sanctification.
We become saints—whatever we look like it on the outside and whatever our reputation—because we are fools for Jesus Christ.
As with anything else in life that’s worth anything this transformation is a process—a healing, not a curing. The wounds we endure remain but are transfigured.
All of these feelings—anger, bitterness, confusion, disgust, however valid—must give way in the end to authentic love.
One of the hardest things to get about authentic Christianity is its love for victimizers (not what they do but the people themselves) as much as victims.
Our God dies for the victims and the victimizers so that we might all die with him and live.
The wrath of God is revealed against all that is not love and will burn away all that is not love in us but the wrath of God does not seek the eradication of those who bear his image, not even those who abuse his name.
God in human flesh teaches us to pray, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
And we are not human until we are human as God is human in Jesus Christ on the Cross at the moment these words are uttered.
This never means we excuse or cooperate with or tolerate evil—the authentic God has no partnership with darkness—but it does mean we are invited to let the Spirit temper our rage and replace our frustration with peace and teach us what it means to learn to love all persons.
And to love them for the sake of love alone for love alone is credible. Love alone is worthy of trust. Love is credal.
This is our God. This is Christianity. This is the church.
Come to God and have life.
Come to the faith and understand the story of the world as the story of the God who serves the creation God loves.
Come to the church and become human as God is human in the flesh of a criminal hanging on a tree for the love of all persons and for the cosmos all of his creatures inhabit.
Join the church and become human as God is human.
Such a tragedy and not only in the USA. Authentic church is very rare in the UK. However:"God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.’ But what is the divine reply to him? ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.'
Posted by: Toby Perks | August 13, 2019 at 02:08 PM