Like thousands of others, I’m at home today instead of in my office. I have a lot of work to do, things I’ve just not been able to get to over the last few weeks because I’ve been stretched and exhausted by other things. Today was supposed to be easy to navigate. While the kids were doing their school work, I was supposed to be finishing a sermon and a retreat plan. I was supposed to have looked at my calendar and figured out a new time for my discipleship group to meet since Sunday got cancelled.
I’ve walked in the icy snow. I’ve shoveled the stuff. I’ve bathed my dog. I’ve eaten breakfast and lunch.
Before all of that, I turned the pages of my Bible to Psalm 101. It’s not often that I laugh when reading the Bible. I did today. The final verse from the New Living Translation says:
My daily task will be to ferret out the wicked
and free the city of the Lord from their grip.
I laughed because I have no time for that.
Lord, if I must ferret out the wicked and free the city, when do I also wife, mother, recover from organizing funerals and memorials and then plan a leadership retreat and all the other bits? My body is achy. I have zero energy for ferreting. I really should sleep. Thankfully I’m not one to automatically do what I read in the Bible as if it’s always a literal instruction manual. I’d be thoroughly overwhelmed, if I did.
But what do I do with these words when this is the worst I’ve known of life in my lifetime?
I listen.
One thing I’ve known and just read again recently from someone’s online post is that some of what we’re experiencing is the result of poor discipleship. I speak specifically to the Christian world and the part of the world that has found a way to sanitize curent evil. This is the evil they’ve seen black bodies commit in other countries and have commented on with words such as “that’s so third world” or “such wickedness” or “what a dictator”. But now that it’s white bodies and because some of those white bodies use certain phrases such as “pro life” the same Christians who said “such wickedness” are saying, “But did you see…” because they’ve decided that to be a Christian is to not speak against the people who seem to be on the same Christian side. Blah blah blah. I’ve said this sort of thing before.
Here’s where it’s currently leading me. If part of the reason more people aren’t in uproar over the recent murders by ICE and all the brutality ICE has engaged in all under the false claim that they’re getting the worst immigrants is because folks didn’t get properly discipled then let’s work on the discipling, shall we?
We’ll begin with identifying what the weak points are in the discipling that has taken place, in no particular order:
- Christianity has taught a lot of black and white, no gray. To have gray is to be lukewarm which no one wants to be lest you be spewed out of the Lord’s mouth.
- “The Bible says it and that’s good enough for me” is an example of the black and white. We’ve taught people that to question, to not automatically agree, is to go against God. This used to be me and then I lost my sight in my left eye. I got more honest after that and even more honest after other losses.
- Which leads me to another black and white statement: “Everything happens for a reason.” Sure. Yes. I can believe that. Ripple effects are real. But when someone says this, it’s typically their way of saying, “Don’t question God” which is a sentiment that I’m 100% against. EHFAR is also a way of silencing grief, as if knowing that there’s a reason (somewhere out there) makes the pain not so bad or nonexistent. If you just believe that there’s a reason, you’ll thank God and keep moving. Yeah right. We’ve got to stop believing that we can make everything make sense. That’s not faith; that’s an immature response to hard things.
- When there is no gray, there’s no nuance, no third option….well, except for in prayer where God’s reply can apparently be yes, no, or maybe/not yet. We add the maybe/not yet so that we don’t need to deal with the discomfort of simply no knowing. I don’t teach that third option because I don’t think prayer is just about asking and getting, which is what we reduce it to when we’re in black and white land. Prayer is an ongoing conversation and every conversation eventually experiences a lull where no one has anything to say and we’re more aware than ever of a cricket chirping or the house settling. Nuance is all over the place and nuance isn’t all bad. Nuance isn’t automatically lukewarm-ness. There’s a security in all-or-nothing thinking, though. So I get the desire to banish nuance.
- Now let’s talk about salvation. The word “security” caused my mind to jump to “assurance” of which many Christians have none with regards to their salvation. “I hope I make it” is a common sentiment. You can read some of my thoughts on this here.
- I have a church member who is a few years from 100 and very much confident that he’ll be in heaven. It’s not because he’s confident in himself; it’s because he’s confident in Jesus being the source of salvation, having done a completed work through his sacrifice on the cross. My member love Jesus, knows Jesus loves him and is loaded with assurance. He’s got a healthy relationship with Jesus and a clear understanding of grace. The freedom he exists within is palpable.
- As a little girl, my dad told our congregation to stop singing “Is My Name Written There”. It only fuels our lack of assurance and my dad knew that then as he knows it now. From that moment, I learned there was no need to wonder and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve understood why.