1together:  Blogthoughts on church, life, and emerging culture…

C’mon, we’ve all seen them, those crazy sounding, homeless and half-drunk looking street preachers, holding up giant signs and megaphones, proclaiming the impending wrath of God. Is this really how Jesus engaged society? The teachings of Christ contain universal truths that are life-changing, and my friends who live outside the tradition of my own faith would unabashedly agree with me. Peace, love, respect for one’s fellow man (or woman), and even proper environmental stewardship are principles that stream out of the life of this man who walked the Earth two thousand years ago.

He preached wherever people would listen, wherever a forum was given. When in the streets he gathered the attention of passersby with miracles and his unique riddle-speak about God and his coming kingdom. I want to be like Jesus, and I do not know one person, committed Christian or ardent atheist, who does not aspire at some level to emulate this curious Hebrew man who left an indelible mark on human history. On this, we can all agree.

I think it’s pretty easy to say that I have been frustrated with the church at large the past few years. I think Evangelicals have grown accustomed to their position of power and have too greatly used their influence in politics in an attempt to change the hearts and minds of an unwilling public. Two largely divisive issues that come to mind are those of abortion and homosexuality. Granted, as Americans, the church deserves it rightful voice in politics, and it would be a sad day should we ever remove ourselves from that national conversation. However, we let ourselves be scared into believing in a future where abortions are as common as going to the grocery store, where pastors are forced to perform marriages for gay couples.

We embarked down a long and lonely road that separated us from the society in which we are meant to live, and attempted to protect ourselves and shelter our children at all costs. Well, these political debates are largely at a standstill, but this détente has brought with it a rift of ruptured relationships and soured the sweetness of the message of a loving and compassionate Savior.

I wish I could say I had nothing to do with this move toward the separation of church and society. I wasn’t standing shoulder-to-shoulder with any proponents of the Christian right, but my inability to see the movement’s effects, my inaction to reach beyond a political solution, makes me just as culpable. How women who have had abortions or gay couples would ever feel welcomed into the church, after all they have had to endure as a result of our desperate attempt to hold onto a world we know while a new one continues to emerge around us, I do not know.

But for those who dare enter the mess left behind, much is to be gained; for it is in this place that Christ is walking once again among us.

Long since before I was born, the church has been praying for revival, for Holy Spirit to once again sweep us up off our feet, shake us silly, and bring in the lost. Sadly, for the old-timers, this is just not the way God is moving anymore. And why should these great “movements” always happen in the same way if society is constantly changing?! I tell you what, if a big revival came tomorrow, the kind that the church has been praying for, I would probably skip it. The idea that if we pray hard enough God will “show up” and people will magically “get saved” is stupid. I’m tired of it, and if it did happen it would only serve to pound the final nail into the coffin of the church’s relevance to society. God forbid we actually open up about our faith to our neighbors in a genuine way that doesn’t make us sound freaky!

I’m not saying that people can’t change, or that God cannot soften the hardened hearts of humanity. But, I do think that we as Christians have a lot of bridge-building to do because, frankly, we are to blame for a lot of those hardened hearts – and this KILLS me!

Now, when it comes to a perverted form of the Gospel that really distorts Christ, I used to poke fun at the Christians I saw on television, or whose self-help, nearly-devoid-of-Christ books I always pass by in the bookstore. And yet, after meeting some of these people and really taking a look at the level of their commitment to the faith, it is IMPOSSIBLE to deny that they are simply doing the best they can with what they know. Accuse them of propagating a distorted view of Christ and I find myself guilty of the same thing! Even the most extreme examples of them will most likely be considered Christian mystics in several hundred years – and even the mystics have a place among the Christian greats.

These are all internal issues, and there have been some faint glimmers of hope in recent years. We are seeing great moves in the area of inter-denominational Christian fellowship. Where we once feared the potential mess that grace and freedom might create, we have learned that community is, in and of itself, a very messy thing and our lives have turned from legalism and embraced something better, more genuine. And there has even been movement in being able to address the topics of sexual brokenness and healing for men and women struggling with memories of past abortions or unwanted homosexuality.

And yet, as we begin to step out into this new frontier, embracing a culture from which we had so well sheltered ourselves, there are those who are unwilling to make the change. Enter the street preachers…if you can call them that.

First off, let me make it clear that I am not dogging on those who preach on street corners in other countries. In places I have been, like Hong Kong and Kampala, street preaching is where many successful pastors converted and brought together the original members of their churches. Other places in the West, like preacher’s corner in Hyde Park, London, is a place where anyone can share whatever is on his or her mind. I myself engaged in street preaching as part of an outreach with YWAM in Mali, West Africa. Every night for two and a half months, two Swiss girls, one Norwegian guy, six Frenchies, and me sang and danced our guts out and shared our love for Christ. In a country where most people do not have electricity and have never seen a flush toilet, let alone a television, social conversation takes place in the streets! But here in America, where the storefront has moved online, such a method of gathering converts is just not as viable. Plus, people just don’t care to pull their car over to stop and listen, especially when what they hear are hateful words shouted through a megaphone – and this, my friends, is not preaching.

Jesus engaged society in a relevant way. The shouters I have seen cropping up around Seattle and other parts of the country do not speak about the glory of the kingdom to come, or the goodness of loving God and one’s fellow man. Instead, they spew a litany of hate that wounds the heart of God and tarnishes the work the church is trying to do. It only fortifies the fence we are trying to remove between society and us.

Maybe I’m the only one to have come in contact with any of these folks, but honestly, I am sure I am not alone. There is a group in Seattle that calls itself “Open Air Seattle.” They picket big events holding signs that read things like, “Repent or Perish,” and “UR Guilty B4 God!” Their “pastor,” whose name is not clearly visible on the website, writes things in his blog like, “When I hear ‘God is love,’ I cringe.”

These are not your typical, run-of-the-mill fanatics who are an embarrassment to sit next to on Sundays. Rather, these are the types of people who view me and other Christians as hell-bound heathens because we have chosen a watered-down non-gospel devoid of God’s wrath.

They have altogether removed themselves from any sort of dialogue, reverting to name-calling and the dismissal of any disagreement whatsoever. When they are shouted at, they consider it persecution and further spread their hate. When engaged by Christians, they choose not to listen, preferring to downgrade my faith because I don’t have the balls to bellow the Bible like they do. Their faith is substantiated by the work of making a fool of themselves for “Christ” on the streets, when all they are is foolish because they Christ whose message they rape is not the gentle, loving man whose words have changed my life.

Without the opportunity to experience God’s grace and forgiveness in my own life, perhaps I would be among them, publicly flagellating myself to cover up the extreme guilt and shame of my past. I mean, it makes sense, right? Grace is so hard to swallow because it requires NOTHING of myself and EVERYTHING of God. It feels so contrary to the human experience because IT IS contrary to everything natural law teaches us: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Not with Christ!

These men and women, sadly, do not know Christ. I am not saying this with a grain of salt, balancing my former statement with “well, not in the way we know Christ.” NO, they do not know him as he truly is, and they have put themselves in the most dangerous position of all because they are completely unwilling to listen to any and every conversation that threatens to unravel the false religion they have built around the shell of a great man. They are no better than the merchants in the temple, or priests selling indulgences, and deserve to have a good whipping for the great abuse they have committed against the gospel, or good news, of Christ!

One of the members of this “Open Air Seattle” group used to attend my church off and on. His wife an children were faithful churchgoers, both daughters would smile and laugh in the Sunday morning kids program and his wife found shelter and friends in the church, a safe place far removed from the distant and abusive husband she knew at home. When I was younger, her husband called our house one night. He was drunk and wanted to talk to my dad. My parents were out for the night and I told him that. He followed by telling me he was “shitfaced” and threatening, “Do you know what I do to people when I get drunk?” I hung up and dialed 9-1-1.

For years he was in and out of church, clearly struggling with alcoholism. I am the last person to judge someone because of personal struggles, but when he “came back” to church the last time, something was different. He had gotten involved with a group of people, the beginnings of this Open Air Seattle group. True to the pattern I had observed in the ten years I knew him, he eventually manipulated his wife to the point that she was forced to leave our church, the only real safe and consistent place she had known for so many years. She is now preaching alongside him and their young daughter, choosing an awkward and forced public pulpit of piety because it better fits into the human equation, and avoids the messy path of grace and freedom. Where is the change?

It just kills me that this family has been so destroyed by this false religion that touts itself as Christianity yet is anything but. This street preaching movement smacks more of the Taliban than it does even of old-school Christianity. I certainly don’t remember any great conversion stories by anyone holding signs of God’s impending wrath, at least post c. 33 AD!

I feel for them the same way I felt for the dwarves in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle. In the final segment of The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis writes of that world’s “End of Days.” The form of Aslan had been distorted and watered down into something it was not, and his true followers thrown into a darkened barn to face his wrath and a painful death.

When the human children and some other Narnians were thrown into the barn they remained in Narnia. It was the same landscape, but newer, fresher, cleaner, and untouched. The sun shone brightly overhead and all that remained of the darkened barn and tattered Narnia whence they had just stepped was a large barn door with weathered boards, standing there in the middle of a vast and endless terrain. The angry God they were told they would find was never there. Eventually they were greeted by the true Aslan and ran with him to embrace the life they were promised. And yet, there was that group of dwarves who could not see past the barn…

When the dwarves entered the barn they huddled in the dark against the wall. The others, who saw only light and freedom tried to tell them it was okay, that they were free and no longer slaves to the pain and wrath they expected. But, the dwarves limited themselves to their own smallness and refused to budge. No matter how hard the others tried to convince the dwarves they were indeed free, the dwarves refused to budge, even mocking the others for thinking that there might be more than a small barn and vengeful creature called God.

Jesus, the friend of sinners, holds out his hand, calling us to run “farther up and farther in,” to leave behind the shame and pain of the past, to let it go for something greater. But this? This is Christianity.