One of the most powerful prescriptions for loving each other comes at the words of Jesus just before he went to the cross. It is recorded in the gospel of John, chapter 15:

9“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

It’s a struggle, that.

I’m particularly struggling through this with the LightChildren. They are struggling with a friend and are learning some new relationship tools. So I find myself reflecting on this passage on many levels … the kerfuffle of earlier this week regarding critique, TexasBlueBelle and her man and now my children … not to mention my own processing of issues from our CLB. How do we love people in the midst of strife?

I’m heading out the door to a sewing retreat where I will sew and meditate upon this. So add your thoughts at will and I’ll enjoy reading them when I return.

There’s been some *stuff* goin’ down in the blogosphere this week. A certain combative pastor from the west coast has been critical of some other emerging pastors. It’s been reported and discussed over in Graceland. Many are winking at the whole affair. The swords were rattling and got loud in the ears of a good brother from the northland.

All the discussion got me thinking about how us humans handle criticism and critique. Cause, you know, nobody really likes it. It’s no fun. If we’re honest, none of us like to hear it. Even under the best of circumstances. But (as you may have noticed if you’ve been around here much lately) I’ve been doing some painting. It’s given me a chance to meditate on this quite a bit. Two things came to mind as I thought about criticism and critique in the church at large … 1 Corinthians 13 and my sainted grandmother.

Now stop thinking of 1 Corinthians 13 as a wedding scripture and just read it … read it and think about what it says to us about how to treat each other. Not how to treat a lover, but your brothers and sisters.

Love

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I thought about this in terms of my grandmother, my Grammy O. My Grammy O was one of my very favorite people ever. There probably was no one more different from me in my family than my Grammy O. But she and I were also quite close. Now she was brought up in a very proper British home and felt that good manners ought to be followed just because. I was a child that needed a good reason for everything. I believe that I tried everyone’s patience. Church was an important part of my grandparent’s life because it was a social expectation. I believe they had a faith, but it was also part of their social routine and moral code to participate in church and the structures that it built in their lives. My mother (their daughter) rejected the church and many of the pointless social rules that went with it as she and my father raised their family (my brothers and I).

When I was growing up we *cussed* frequently and with some abandon in my family. We used God and Jesus’ name in vain often. There wasn’t any point in keeping them holy because no one in my immediate family believed in God. The summer that I was 10 I went to spend an extended period of time with my grandparents and my mother spoke to me before I left about my grandparents and their beliefs. She reminded me to keep my cussing down and to use other words if I needed them. Words such as “jeesum crow” and “gosh darn it.” I worked very hard at monitoring my language with my grandparents. But quite early on in the visit I was reading in bed one evening and my Grammy came up to kiss me goodnight. She sat on the edge of the bed and spoke earnestly with me about how she knew how hard I was working to make her and Grampy happy. And she knew it was difficult. But it was also disturbing to them that I used these new words too, because, well, they knew what those words STOOD for! At ten I was mystified. What on earth was I supposed to do?

But here’s the thing. I still remember that scene 36 years later as clear as a bell. I’ve heard countless discussions on why people need to keep their speech pure. Why what comes out of a person’s mouth makes them look good or bad. Blah blah blah. But what sticks with me and makes me think year in and year out … is my grandmother’s loving countenance, speaking to me gently with love. It was her loving criticism and critique that continues to this day to make me think about how I want to present myself to the world. It doesn’t always change what I say or how I say it, but it continues to make me think.

Now I italicized some bits and pieces of 1 Corinthians 13 above because they stand out to me and bits and pieces that are pertinent to how a person might be in relationship with another person in order to critique and criticize someone else. But I wonder if perhaps the time for criticizing and critiquing others is when we are in community with them. From this point on … that includes me.

To end with a prayer by an Irish bard of this era:

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn

Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

It’s a good thing no one turned away Jewish refugees in 1930’s when they desperately needed places to go to get away from the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Or maybe that’s why Israel feels justified in turning away refugees now … because people did it to them.  One might imagine that they would have empathy for the horrors of war and genocide and offer refuge.

But apparently not.

It seems fitting after my post yesterday that I participate in this meme begun by John Smulo (thanks to an invite from Erin at Decompressing Faith). It’s also fitting because I helped him (in a very, very small way) with the original website. If you’re unfamiliar with Christians Confess, please check it out. John is the torch bearer for many of us who are grieved with the face of the church in the public square today. He created the site as a forum for Christians to apologize for the wrongs they see the church and other Christians doing both today and in the past. It is also a place for those who do not consider themselves Christian to tell their stories. It’s a great place and I encourage you to visit.

First the rules of the meme:

1. Apologize for three things that Christians have often got wrong. Your apologies should be directed towards those who don’t view themselves as part of the Christian community. Alternatively, apologize for things you personally have done wrong towards those outside of the church.
2. Post a comment at the originating post so others can keep track of the apologies.
3. Tag five people to participate in the meme.
4. If desired, send an email with the link to your blog post at the Christians Confess site, giving permission for your apologies to be added to the website.

Here are the things I’d like to apologize for … in no particular order.

Here’s the thing … it’s pretty clear that Jesus came to bring hope, healing and freedom and we, the church, his followers have sucked all the fun out of that. We’ve taken the hope out of hope and continued wounding the wounded and piled chains on slaves. I am so sorry.

For those of you who bothered to read up on Jesus, I know you read the wonderful stories about people flocking to Him and finding love. Or finding a miracle and you hoped that if you came to church you’d get some too. So you came with that last ember cupped in your hands, coming to find the God you’d read about and the love, treasure and the miracle. We stomped on it. I am mortified that we took your last hope and extinguished it. Lord have mercy. I am so sorry.

Jesus was Jewish and we forget that the roots of our faith lie in that rich ancient tradition. Isaac had a half-brother Ishmael who became the grandfather of Islam. We have much to learn from other faith traditions and other perspectives on God. S/He who created the universe may not be reduced to a linear equation and we demean Her when we do this. We have much to apologize to other faiths for and I am again … so very, very sorry.

I tag …. (drum roll … )

Doug at Perigrinatio
Patrick at Dual Ravens
Julie at OneHandClapping
Kievas at Sharing A Journey
Sally at Eternal Echoes

Like John and Erin before me, if you read this and wish to participate, just leave your link in the comments and I will pass it on up the chain. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to participate in this … I just picked some people who have circles of blog-friends who are different than mine.

There was quite a bit made of a very good article about the care and feeding of introverts over on Brother Maynard’s blog awhile back. I found the article fun and funny. I loved it and shared it with BlazingEwe. During a phone call. We laughed and laughed … we two introverts together. While my family listened in.

They did not find it funny.

They are not introverts.

In particular, LightHusband is not an introvert. To his everlasting credit, he tries very hard to understand me and my introversion and he does well with it. But it’s exhausting to both of us. It’s exhausting to my family.

Most people think that introverts sit in a corner and don’t speak; hermits in the public square as it were. The classic shy retiring violet, a wall flower. But that’s not Carl Jung’s version of introversion. As it’s described, introverts need downtime to “recharge their batteries.” Extroverts, on the other hand, recharge by being with people. Introverts are drained in their exchanges with people. I love people and hanging out … but it also drains me. It particularly drains me because I’m also iNtuitive and Feeling and Perceptive. So when I have interactions with people, I’m working on many different levels and I go home and process, sometimes for days (depending on the emotional level of the encounter). This is a problem for me, because most people consider the event over and done with … I usually have a lot of questions afterwards that I didn’t ask then and there because I couldn’t.

Or … here’s another description. LightHusband works from home. He has an office in our basement. It’s a lovely quiet office lined with bookshelves and painted pale green. Did I mention how quiet and calm it is? He has made a concerted effort lately to actually work in his office rather than in the family room where I have to overhear his phone calls in addition to the children all day long. This morning I went down to talk to him about something. At the end of our conversation he admitted to me that he hated his office. He drooped in his chair and said, “I’m going to try and motivate myself over the sound of my ears ringing.” I looked around and said, “What! This is the best room in the house! How could you not work in this room?!” Then we laughed at each other and with each other.

He can pick up and go on a trip, come home and reintegrate back into life just like flipping a switch. I have sidle into and out of my life slowly making sure there are no booby traps or anything.

More recently, Bill Kinnon at Achievable Ends riffed on this and linked to some very funny descriptions of the sixteen personality types. The INFP was more apt than I’d like to admit … and Friends really is a stupid show, even if I do watch it in reruns every now and again.

Still, though, I have this thing … I have to process slowly. It can take months sometimes. Some examples. It finally occurred to me that I/we had been released from our CLB. It happened during the final meeting I had with the leadership (sans my husband who was part of the team). One said that the vision for the church had always been theirs. The other person affirmed this statement by saying that the vision was good. I was rocked back on my mental heels thinking to myself, “I thought a church’s vision came from God and that anyone could give voice to it.” I said nothing at the time. I was too shaken. I’ve pondered that scene often though. Remembered the nuance. I realize now that the question in my head was a release. It was a trigger from God saying, “You are finished here. There is no more that you can do or say.” There are many times I find myself in that awkward position. Shaken. Unable to speak. Something of grave import has just occurred and I ought to speak, share something. Instead I find that I must process and think. Speaking into the moment means I will say something dangerous, or foolish or heartless. But not speaking leaves others with the mistaken impression that I am in agreement or have assented with them. Or at the very least do not disagree with them. I have attempted processing and thinking into emotionally intense situations … it ends very badly.

I think this might be especially true because I am a woman. Women do not do well being introverts. We do not do well being introverts who process for long periods of time and who need time to think things through in emotionally intense situations. Culturally, we are expected to be able to navigate emotional situations with ease. We are expected to not become angry. An angry woman is seen as a domineering bitch, but an angry man is seen as taking control of a situation. In any given situation the woman loses, the man wins. So as a woman who struggles with navigating those waters; navigating emotionally intense situations without a safety net is particularly uncomfortable for me. It brought me up short to read this in ch. 2 Patterns: spatial observations of Organic Community:

This “encouragement” may also be quietly reinforced within church leadership structures. Perhaps we’ve successfully forced everyone into some form of a small group. This in itself might be okay if we recognize that many kinds of groupings can serve the same role as “small groups.” Instead, the pressure continues when small group leaders are told that if intimate connections are not taking place within their groups, their groups are failures. We need to bear in mind that the most accurate word to describe the process of forcing intimate connection is rape. (p. 46 – italics the author’s)

“The most accurate word to describe the process of forcing intimate connection is rape.” I’ve been considering that sentence for the month or so since I read it. I’ve been reading it and rereading it in it’s context. Thinking about the times I’ve been forced to be in more intimate connections with people than I was comfortable with and praying for forgiveness for the times that I’ve asked it of others. Pondering, as I am wont, how to strike a healthy balance so that intimacy may be won and adversity lost.

… and what am I learning lately.

This is a new synchroblog co-ordinated by Glenn Hager at Re-dreaming the Dream. I learned about it from Erin. The theme resonates with a lot of the thinking I’ve been doing lately, so I thought I’d participate.

So here’s my list … in no particular order other than the order in which I thought of them.

– I learned that women are second class citizens in God’s economy.

– I learned that the Bible can be used like statistics … to prove anything that the user wants it to prove. It’s not a beacon of love; it’s a weapon to bludgeon people with.

– I learned that faith and religion are interchangeable.

– I learned that Jesus is a Republican and I’d better be too or my salvation would be null and void. I also learned that Jesus is a free-market capitalist who looked down on welfare cheats because they leached off the system.

– I learned that America is now God’s promised land and we are God’s new people.

– I learned that church is just like any other social group … only it’s rules are more strict and they’ll exclude you in a flash if you break them.

What I’m learning lately … is there is no second-class … or first-class … in God’s economy. We are all on equal footing, equal creations in the eyes of the Creator. There is no separate but equal to Her. There is just, is. We just are. We are just created. Different, yes. But that does not mean that some get to do some things and others not … that does not mean that all can sin equally but that all cannot serve equally. We are indeed equal … equally loved, equally serving, equally gifted. Anything else is a lie.

I cannot discern how to use the Bible as anything other than a love letter to me. I rarely use it in conversation anymore. There are bits and pieces that are meaningful to me and I might quote those, as people quote poetry or other pieces of literature that are meaningful. But using proof texts and finding pieces that “prove” my point in a legal argument seems to miss the mark of God’s intent with his Word to us.

I’m losing my religion and keeping my faith … in large part because it seems that people in charge of the church lied. They are way more interested in keeping their own patch of turf than in understanding God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit and passing the understanding on.

Well … Jesus and politics or economics just stands on it’s own. He pretty much spoke out against the powers of his age and I’m certain he’d speak out against Republicans AND Democrats now.

God only has one promised land and promised people. Israel. Now. Here’s the kicker. He sent the Israelites out of the Promised Land around 2,000 years ago and He hasn’t brought them back. So a lot of the current troubles that are happening in the Middle East. Yeah. Those are man made. I could write a book … no, several books … on why the current Middle East troubles have nothing whatsoever to do with God bringing the Jews back to Israel and everything to do with men doing it. No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything. It’s just that God was not in that. People were. So there will not be any peace or redemption or reconciliation. There will be war. And as for the US … we are not God’s promised land or promised people despite any songs we might sing or secret ambitions we might have. We’re just lucky. There but for the grace of God go us; we really ought to be a little more grateful, and a little less arrogant.

I learned in the Bible that church is supposed to be Christ’s Bride, His Body here on earth. I learned in church that it’s just another social group with strict social rules that need to be followed in order to be included. It’s part of the faith vs. religion thing. But all churches are social groups. All of them. In order to be part of one, you must follow the rules. The first rule is that they are not really Jesus followers. That’s only part of the show. If you really want to be a Jesus follower, you’d do best to leave the church and do that on your own time. The church is too busy with their own parties … err ministries … to bother with the things that Jesus talks about. Above all … don’t ever ask anyone to talk to God about what they’re doing. Don’t ever suggest that anyone in leadership pray to God about their participation in an issue. Don’t ever suggest that following Jesus might mean stopping and listening sometimes. Don’t think outside the box. Don’t ask questions. Don’t quibble with leaders. Don’t be free. I’m learning that on my own it’s just possible that I might be able to hear God again. Maybe. I hope so. I’ve been missing him.

UPDATE (Aug 5):

Here’s a list of all the folks who participated in this synchroblog … they’ve got a lot of great things to say, but make sure you read Glen’s Summary here … it’s really, really good:

Glenn @ Re-dreaming the Dream: Synchroblog (Introduction)

Erin @ Decompressing Faith: Think Of It As “Agapeology.”

Alan @ The Assembling of the Church: Here I Am To Worship.

Heather @ A Deconstructed Christian: 15 Things I Learned From and Another 15 I Am Learning Lately

Jim @ Lord, I Believe; Help My Unbelief : Some Ecclesiastical Paradoxes

Lew @ The Pursuit: It’s A Grace vs. Works Thing

Lyn @ Beyond the 4 Walls: Learning To be “Proper”

Paul @ One For The Road : A Gracious Voice

Benjamin @ Justice and Compassion: Pithy and Provocative

Julie @ Onehandclapping: Faith, Certainty, and Tom Cruise

Aaron @ Regenerate: Hope

Monte @ Monte Asbury’s Blog: Jesus Doesn’t Matter Much

Rachael @ Justice and Compassion Rachael Stanton

Glenn @ Re-dreaming the Dream: Unsaid Communication

Glenn @ Re-dreaming the Dream: Reflections About Refugees (Summary Reflection)

I don’t remember how old this ad campaign is. They all start to run together after awhile. Some of you may remember the Dr. Pepper ads … I think they ran in the late 1970’s judging from the look.

It’s very seductive. If you drink Dr. Pepper, you’ll have lots of friends; be part of the “in-crowd.” According to this ad, everyone wants “to be a Pepper.” Look at all the shiney, happy people being “Peppers.” I don’t like Dr. Pepper, but I want to be one after watching that ad. I’d even drink one now and again if I could have that life.

Ads like that are deceptive (of course). They strum the chords of our desire to belong. They dig around deep in the hurts that we all have and ask, “Do you have what you want?” Then they tell us, “You can belong. Just get this one thing and you’ll be part of the in-crowd.”

Why do we have this deep down desire to belong? And why does it keep us purchasing more and more stuff? I think there are a couple of reasons for that. First, I think that we’re all born with a desire to be in groups. We were made to bond with others in families and in communities (how we were made that way is not the focus of this post … so I’m not going there). Second, I think that at some level and at some time in our lives we have each been branded as “untouchable” by a group and been excluded from that group for reasons which were beyond our control. This caused a wound and a desire to overcome that exclusion … to become part of the in-crowd far beyond the wound that was created.

In the first century, Jesus is recorded as having healed many people. It is told that he healed several lepers, blind people, cured a woman with an unstoppable menses, cripples, etc. At the time these people were considered (especially the lepers) as untouchables. In the first century, people with physical and mental problems of this nature were believed to have brought it upon themselves by some sin or have had it brought upon them by sin in their family’s past. In other words, it was the choices made by them or their families that caused the problems they were now facing. It was, to be succinct, their own fault they were lepers, or blind, or deaf, or bleeding, or … etc.

Those of us who read the New Testament shrink from that understanding in dismay. We are much more enlightened now. And we know some of what Jesus knew. That those people were suffering from physical maladies over which they had no control at all.

Ah, yes. We are much more enlightened now. We no longer have leper communities. We no longer have beggars in our streets. We no longer treat our mentally ill as if they were possessed of demons and keep them locked away. Or … do we?

Every human group has a defined set of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. Some are universal. Thou shalt not kill other humans seems to be universal (for good reason). Doing bodily harm to other humans also seems to be universal. After that it gets kind of dicey. In the institutional, fundamentalist Protestant church sexual deviance (that is anything that deviates from one man-one woman-missionary position) is considered unacceptable behavior … for life. There is no repenting or forgiveness once one has crossed that line. How about if one considers being a Democrat? The emerging church/conversation has its own set of unacceptable behaviors as well. What if one chooses to live a solitary life? Or continues to shop at Wal-Mart? Flagrantly? The secular community has unacceptable behaviors too … alcoholism, sexual offenses, being overweight.

My point is, we continue to shun people for things that they may have little or no control over. Weight, substance abuse, and sexual orientation are all issues which have deep, deep roots in people’s psyche’s. I am daily more convinced that sexual orientation something that a person is born with and is immutable. Weight and substance abuse issues have life long causes, consequences and cures. We cannot decide for others what they have a “choice” in. Because we do not live in their heads. We only live in our own heads. Here in our own heads we are all broken, each and every one of us. If every group has its own untouchables, its own lepers, then we all must be lepers of one sort of another.

Every time we create an “us” and a “they”, we have created modern day lepers, untouchables. We have created a set of people with whom we will not associate. If we are to begin to learn how to love as Jesus loved (that would be to love our neighbors as ourselves) we must begin to see others not as we want them to be (perfect), but as they are … fellow creations of God. We must begin to see them as “us.” Fellow lepers in the colony of earth. Wouldn’t ya like to be a leper too?

Here are the rest of my fellow syncrobloggers thoughts … and they are probably more well thought out than mine!

Mike Bursell muses about Untouchables

David Fisher on Touching the Pharisees – My Untouchable People Group

Michael Bennet writes Nothing more than the crust life

Jeremiah at Models of church leadership and decision-making as they apply to outreach

John Smulo talks about Christian Untouchables

Sally Coleman shares on The Untouchables

Sam Norton talks about Untouchables

Steve Hayes on Dalits and Hindutva

Josh Rivera does his stuff with the Untouchables

Fernando A. Gros speaks up on Untouchability And Glocalisation

Phil Wyman throws out the Loose Lips – A “SinkroBlog”

According to Wikipedia, persecution is defined thusly:

… persecution seems to be the expression of a more general trend in human social behaviour, (perhaps related to tribalism ), which seeks to impose or enforce conformity.

Persecution is not recognised as such by persecutors, only by their victims or outside observers. Persecutors either see no wrong in their actions, or rationalize it as a small or short-term wrong to counter what they see as a larger, more serious wrong, as in The ends justify the means. Most commonly, this is expressed as seeking to protect themselves or their families or society from what they see as the harmful influence of the persecuted group.

Persecuted groups are often labelled using pejorative terms which reinforce their social alienation. For example different races are called inferior or sub-human; different religions are called infidels or heathen; political groups are called subversive; homosexuals and drug users are called immoral. Use of such terms with strongly negative connotations allows individuals to avoid examining the true nature of their relationship with the persecuted group.

Since people are, in general, incapable of recognising their own prejudices, compiling a full list of all forms of persecution is inevitably controversial. For almost anything which could be cited as an example of persecution, there will be those who claim it is legitimate personal or social self-defense.

Hmmmm …. having recently been involved in some personal conflict, this description gave me pause. During the conflict I often felt persecuted. So did some of the others involved. Since we were at odds with one another, the question arises who were the persecuted and who were the persecutors. But, then again, perhaps that is not the important question. The far more important question might be, does the end justify the means?

We are very familiar with this concept. It was first published by Niccolo Machiavelli in his political masterpiece, The Prince in 1515 … In a brutal world, where every man is out for himself, being something other than what one actually is, for fun and profit, as long the ends are worthy, is a valuable tool:

For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.

The above quote comes from chapter 18 entitled “Concerning the Way In Which Princes Should Keep Faith.” I read that chapter at least three times. I could not find a tiny piece of it which glorified God, or spoke of learning to walk with Him. So I wondered who the prince was keeping faith with? Was it God, the people, his betters, himself?

The more startling issue is that I had to read several chapters before finding this. I was amazed at how ingrained in our culture Machiavellian thinking has become. We have all become little princes, looking after our fiefdoms. Far from being the polemic on evil that I thought it was, it merely outlined poltics and living as we have come to know it in the late 20th and early 21st century. Are we running late for an appointment? Then sure, cut someone off and potentially cause an accident (or at least cause their heart rate to go up). Our good and/or necessary ends justify the means. We’ll do penance through helping someone else out later in the week. Or slip a little extra in the collection plate at church.

Pulling back the lens a little we look at our farming practices which are causing havoc in creation and the animal kingdom. But the good and/or necessary ends are that we can feed so many more people so far away now. Do those means really add up? Do those means truly justify the ends? Are we merely gaining something in the short term which will cause greater long term damage?

Then I look at the example set by God. I see that He never, no never, not one time followed this line of thinking. Granted He is God and as I believe Him to be, He has more and greater knowledge of the way things are than I do. But He does not take the route of ends justifying the means. If that were the case, we would not celebrate Easter each year. He would have found an easier route to our salvation than condemning a part of Himself to death. He is endlessly patient, never willing that an event should happen before its proper time. Knowing when each seed needs to grow to fruition and when it needs to lie waiting.

The longer I walk down this road with my Saviour, the more I am coming to think that every time we act in line with “the ends justify the means,” we are working against the will of God and become the persecutor. But if we lay that down and earnestly seek His will for ourselves and our neighbors (whoever they may be) we continue to walk in His will. Will this open us up to becoming the persecuted? Probably. But that is a story for another day, my beloved.

Here are the rest of the Synchrobloggers and their masterpieces … which are actually more worthy than mine:

• David Fisher – Be the Revolution
• Fishing for Trouble – Phil Wyman’s Square No More
• Mike Bursell – Mike’s Musings
• Restoring Our View of Humanity – Eternal Echoes
• Persecuting the Marginalized – JohnSmulo.com
• The Ends Justify the Means – Calacirian
• Billy Calderwood – Billy Calderwood
• Seeking First Righteousness – Tim Abbott
• Jamie Swann – More Than Stone
• Persecution and Martyrdom – Handmaid Leah
• “Don’t squash the counter-revolutionary/the plank in my own eye” – Jeremiah
• The Martyrs of Epinga at Notes from Underground
• Terrorism in Christianity at The Rivera Blog
• Persecution or Poor Elocution? Hello, said Jenelle

The Church is two things. It is at one and the same time a human institution founded by humans, run by humans and failed by humans. It is also an institution ordained by God to be His Body incarnate here on earth, His Bride in waiting, the Kingdom peeking out in the here giving us glimpses of the not yet.

A couple of weeks ago Bill Kinnon wrote an excellent post entitled PFK as the Congregation (if you haven’t yet read it, go do so now. I’ll wait). At almost the same time and with much, much less thought I wrote Leaving Oz, which, we agreed, was on the same wave length. Last week Emerging Grace wrote The Underlying Issues as a follow-up to PFKC where she outlined Bill’s main points. She hit the ball out of the park, once again.

Grace began her post with a bit of a sally against those who seem to think that we who criticize the church are bitter and angry. Some might be. Some might be working through those issues and still retain valid criticisms of the Church.

I’m going to mix up politics and faith here for a little bit. I hope you won’t mind, but I find it necessary to make my point.

When our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution, one of the most prominent freedoms for them was freedom of thought or speech. It was very important to them that they be allowed to think and say what they wanted to. As well as being allowed to worship in the manner in which they chose. Hence we have clauses in the Declaration of Independence that read like:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

and the First Amendment to the Constitution which states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

But how many of us really take those to heart? Really. How often do we speak up and say what’s on our minds, or think outside the box, or differently from the rest of the crowd? It’s extremely rare. We are a culture in which it is the norm to want to do like everyone else. Those who march to their own beat are ostracized and excluded, by the whole pack. It’s not just the leaders who are responsible, but all of us.

I’ve been seeing this my whole life. LightHusband and I have a very good friend from our youth. I’ll call him BestMan (since he was our best man when we got married). When LightHusband and I were dating, we hung out with BestMan a lot and carried on conversations about life, culture and anything else that crossed our minds. Literally … anything! One of the things that used to amaze us was how like cows people are. Since we all grew up in Vermont, this analogy was apt. People get in a herd and follow along without thinking, they just do what the butt in front of them is doing. I realize that sounds awfully harsh … but remember we were youthful and harsh at the time. We are not taught or encouraged to think about what might exist outside the herd. Get in your car, sit in traffic, sit in your cubicle, get ahead, sit in your car, sit in your cube house, go to sleep … do it all again.

Now let’s go back to the Church. How is the Church going to be any different in this atmosphere? I think that Bill and Grace have extremely valid criticisms and concerns about how the Church has been lead in the last several decades or so. But I don’t think that all of the responsibility can be heaped on the leadership. I think that we the PFKC have to take some of the blame too. After all … for the longest time, we’ve liked it this way. We’ve enjoyed our emerald spectacles, and our comfortable happy lives that our wizards, oops, I mean pastors have given us.

Remember, when the wizard left Oz, the people didn’t fling off their spectacles and cry out, “We are free! We are free!” No, they mourned his loss and wondered how on earth they were going to get along without him.

“Good-bye!” shouted everyone, and all eyes were turned upward to where the Wizard was riding in the basket, rising every moment farther and farther into the sky.

And that was the last any of them ever saw of Oz, the Wonderful Wizard, though he may have reached Omaha safely, and be there now, for all we know. But the people remembered him lovingly, and said to one another:

“Oz was always our friend. When he was here he built for us this beautiful Emerald City, and now he is gone he has left the Wise Scarecrow to rule over us.”

Still, for many days they grieved over the loss of the Wonderful Wizard, and would not be comforted.

My theory is that the Church for many people (even in fundamental/evangelical/charismatic churches) is a social contract with social functions. By social contract, I am referring to the contract first discussed by John Locke in Two Treatises of Government. I don’t mean to belittle or demean in any way the faith or relationship that most people have with God or Jesus. I have to assume that they must have a vibrant faith. It’s just different and their view of church is different than mine. They are in small churches, medium churches, and mega-churches. But regardless of size they are in a place where they like wearing colored spectacles, and being told where to go and what to do by a leader who has built a beautiful city for them to live in; a leader who sets himself apart and is above the people. A leader who was dropped in from above and will one day leave just as mysteriously, but will never quite be one of them. The people will adore him, listen to his every word, follow him … but they will never quite know him. Now here’s the thing … both the leader AND the people like it this way. Both entities are getting something out of this.

There is however, a growing group of people who are not satisfied with this status quo. Who have begun looking around and thought that there might be a third way. For lack of a better term, or maybe because I like it a lot, we can call ourselves PFKC now. Or as Jamie Arpin-Ricci is calling us, The Community Coming To Be Known As Missional, this third way, this way of being Jesus; of not just sitting in a pew on Sunday and counting it sanctified all week long. It looks like many things. It’s walking a tightrope amidst a broad road. It’s living with open hands in a tight fisted culture. It’s seeing a mother’s dreams on the face of an old homeless man. It’s seeing people not clerks in the grocery store. Having authentic friendships without any ulterior motives. It’s learning how to be yourself again, the beautiful one who God created to be and love and laugh in the world; to be in relationship with Him and with others.

So how do these two sets of people get along with one another? One set is comfortable within the social contract, loving the leader, wearing the colored spectacles, following the crowd and the rules (whatever they may be). They love the beautiful walled city in which they live, apart from everyone else. The other set has grown discomfitted with the social contract, thrown down their colored spectacles, gone adventuring outside the walls of the city, decided that the rules are not necessary for their existence and that the crowd might be going in a direction they don’t want to go.

One set is, by nature, conservative, holding on tightly to the things they know and love. The other set is, by nature, radical, letting go and finding new ways; new wine in old wineskins. It’s my hope and dream that the two groups can get along, can love each other as children of God, as mutual brothers and sisters in Christ. We do things differently, we see the world differently, but we share one God, one Saviour, one Holy Spirit. If we can manage to walk through this new way lovingly we will not further splinter the Church, but perhaps bring it back together again. That is my dream today.

This is beautiful:

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

Read the rest of the article about Francis S. Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.  It’s at CNN.com and is entitled, Collins:  How a scientist can believe in God.

“… science can actually be a means of worship.”  What a powerful statement of faith in the beauty and wonder of creation.  I’m awed.