Month: June 2015

Last night, again, I sat with a Christian friend who is struggling very deeply with his faith.  In fact, what is more clear to me than it probably is to him is that he lives with a kind of anguish, a internal and unspoken resignation to believing he will never fully being a full member of the Body of Christ, but only, at best, as an exception God might endure if he tries hard enough.  While this kind of conversation is particularly heartbreaking to me, it is anything but new.  In fact, I have distinct memories of late night dorm room conversations more than 20 years ago around this very topic. So why are there so many loving, faithful people struggling to believe that God could possibly love them without putting an asterisk by their names in the Book of Life?

I am afraid there is no short answer.  Certainly the vitriol and disgust that has been expressed to me individually and to entire groups of people in the media over the last few days plays some part, but rather than try to provide some social analysis and recommendation to the Church on how to be less crappy neighbors in communicating grace,  I think it is a good time to turn my attention to those of you who, like I have in life, ever felt myself to be an exception to the love of God.  This is in every way, my own story, and not just a story I want you to know about, it is one in which I would like you to join me.

Every time I have tried to sit down and write a coherent reflection this week I have stalled and stammered.  Not only are the events of the past several days complex and overwhelming, the endless grandstanding, commentary, and politicking is absolutely deafening. It is hard to wrap my brain around everything that is going on.  Meanwhile, A pastor threatens to set himself on fire in the wake of gay marriage while across town several churches are actually burning even while we are still morning the deaths of the nine slain brothers and sisters whose kindness almost turned the heart of their murderer.  It is here in the midst of the elation and grief that at least one segment of the Church has managed to find one strange, even baffling narrative to sum it all up, “We are being persecuted!”

After sighing loudly and executing an eye roll that would make Liz Lemon feel like an eye-roll amateur, there is part of me that deeply wants to lash out and rant against this kind of histrionics. But honestly that too would fall of deaf ears or feed that culture war cacophony that tends to make us tune out everyone who doesn’t agree with what we already believe.  So I instead I would like to suggest a less ranty, and slightly more Biblical perspective on the matter:  Yes, we are being persecuted, and this is what you signed up for…