Gentle Reader,
It’s incredibly cold here, because North Idaho seems to have forgotten that we’re closer to spring than we are winter.
One of the dogs Houdini’d her way out of the backyard the other day. Pretty sure she jumped the fence.
I have finished four books, started four others, and read multiple articles for seminary, and this is only the end of the fourth week.
I’m a little tired.
But I’m doing my best to make time for writing, so here I am. Droopy eyed, icicle toes, hair extra fluffy since I got it cut yesterday.
Go.
What if we actually lived as God calls us to live? What if we were the kind of people, the sort of community, that stands out against the backdrop of the surrounding world, in the best of ways?
We got into a lengthy discussion about this today in class. I couldn’t help getting hot under the collar. I am untangling my own flawed understanding of holiness – it’s not just about outward behavior – so I don’t want to get caught up in any sort of legalism, rigid rule-keeping. I don’t want the Church to emphasize crushing perfectionism and conformity.
But I do want the Church to stop providing shelter for unrepentant exploiters, users, abusers. I want the Church to stop being so afraid of looking at our history, of how we’ve been influenced by and even capitulated to cultural forces that are antithetical to the Gospel. I want us to stop refusing to have the difficult conversations. To stop justifying, ignoring, excusing. To stop avoiding repentance.
I want the Church to stop asking victims to continue bearing the weight of their victimizers, for fear of angering the victimizers. That is a power dynamic utterly foreign to the way of Christ.
For several years now I have believed that God is exposing the faults in God’s Bride as she is situated in the Western context in order that we might learn to let go of attitudes, beliefs, and actions that are not pleasing to God. And what if we did that? What if we let go of racism, sexism, classism, nationalism, denialism, all the isms, and grabbed onto the ethics of the Kingdom? Justice, mercy, humility, truth, love?
What if, once we did that, we discovered that Scripture really is true, and anything else we attached ourselves to is empty?
That God, and God’s way, really is what we need?
Stop.