To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing,
and used-to-be-believing friends:
I feel like I should begin with a confession.
I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to
God has been Christians. Christians who have had
so much to say with our mouths and so little to
show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we
have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.
Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing
things we have done in the name of God.
The other night I headed into downtown Philly
for a stroll with some friends from out of town.
We walked down to Penn's Landing along the river,
where there are street performers, artists, musicians.
We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet
tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then
there was a preacher. He wasn't quite as captivating
as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a
microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake
dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going
to die and go to hell if we don't know Jesus.
Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up.
A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the
coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump
up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs,
"God is not a monster." Maybe next time I will.
The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus,
the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads
best not through force but through fascination.
But over the past few decades our Christianity,
at least here in the United States, has become less
and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less
and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many
of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less
and less like Jesus.
At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian,
and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians
seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the
top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among
young non-Christians are that Christians are
1) antigay,
2) judgmental, and
3) hypocritical.
So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis,
and much of that reputation is well deserved.
That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin
by saying that I'm sorry.
Now for the good news.
I want to invite you to consider that maybe the
televangelists and street preachers are wrong —
and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of
the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace,
patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the
ugly things that have come to characterize religion,
or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have
learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you
can have great answers and still be mean...
and that just as important as being right is being nice.)
The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus
to condemn the world but to save it... it was because
"God so loved the world." That is the God I know,
and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote
my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or
because I wanted crowns in heaven... but because he is good.
For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey,
I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians.
We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow
God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name.
At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came
"not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus,
may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for
mansions in heaven.
Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife,
but too often all the church has done is promise the world
that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore
the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel
has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message
of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about
bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray
that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.
One of Jesus' most scandalous stories is the story of the Good
Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original
story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of
the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious
guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting
at church). And then comes the Samaritan... you can almost
imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to
Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan
stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as
the hero of the story. I'm sure some of the listeners were ticked.
According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the
right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine...
but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a
way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken
person lying in the ditch.
It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly.
God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as
likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute.
In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying
prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David...
at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam
through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through
his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since.
So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful
but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting
someone we think God could never use, we should think again.
After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on
everybody else: "The tax collectors and prostitutes are
entering the Kingdom ahead of you." And we wonder what
got him killed?
I have a friend in the UK who talks about "dirty theology" —
that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and
healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most
unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins
with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt,
and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud,
spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him.
(The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy
that day.)
In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just
want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood,
a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come."
It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard
and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects,
and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits
and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was
a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others.
It is the final promise that love wins.
It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a
genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the
streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries
and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who
is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us
from the ghettos of wealth.
In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion —
I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was
going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven
without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe
God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we
should at least pray that it is.
Your brother,
Shane
Read more:
http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/shane-claiborne-1209#ixzz0fbM2FbR2
