Hope In Love

At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face. “Church!” she cried. “Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.” What struck me about my friend’s story is that women much like this prostitute fled towards Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift? Evidently the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among his follwers. What has happened?
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In his book guilt and grace, the swiss doctor Paul Tournier, a man of deep personal faith, admits , “I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that religion – my own as well as that of all believers – can crush instead of liberate.”
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Tthere will be no escape from wars , from hunger, from misery, from racial discrimination, from denial of human rights and not even from missiles if our hears re not changed.
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Elton Trueblood notes that the image Jesus used to describe the church’s destiny – the gates of hell will not prevail against it – is a mtaphor of offence, not defence. Christians are storming the gates, and they will prevail. No matter how it looks at any given point in history, the gates guarding the powers of evill will not withstand an assault by grace.
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“We’re all bastards but god loves us anyway.”
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Some christians say, “yes we should treat gays with compassion but at the same time we must give them a message of judgement.” After these interviews I began to understand that every gay person has heard the message fo judgement from the church – again and again, nothing but judgement. the more theologically inclined gay people I interviewed interpret the biblical passages on homosexuality differently. Some of them told me they had offered to sit down and discuss these differences with conservative scholars, but no one had agreed.
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I left washington with my head reeling. I had attended packed-out worship services marked by fervent singing, praying , and testifying – all oriented around what the christian church has always tought to be a sin. Also, I could sense my friend Mel edging closer and closer to a choice that I knew would be morally wrong – to divorce his wife and lose his ministry in order to begin a scary new life fraught with temptation. It occured to me that my own life would be much simpler if i had never met Mel White. But he was my friend – how should I treat him? What would grace have me do? What would Jesus do?
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Moreover, although Christians have died to sin, in some theoretical way, it keeps popping back to life. A friend of mine who led a bible study on this passage had one college coed come to him afterwards with a puzzled expression. “I know it says we’ve died to sin” she said, “but in my life sin seems very much alive.” Paul a realist, recognized this fact or else he would not have advised us in the same passage “count yourself dead to sin” and “do not let sin reign in your mortal body”.
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Jesus did not fault the pharisees for extremism in itself – I doubt he really cared what they ate or how many times they washed their hands. But he did care that they imposed their extemism on others and that they focused on trivialities, neglecting more weighty matters. The same teachers who tithed their kitchen spices had little to say about injustice and oppresion in Palestine. And when Jesus healed a person on the sabbath, his critics seemed far more concerned about protocol than about th esick person…the church i grew up in had much to say about hairstyles, jewelery, and rock music but not a word on racial injustice and the plight of blacks in the south.
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By it’s very nature legalism encourages hypocrisy because it defines a set of behaviour that may cloak what is going on inside. At a bible college or christian camp and even a church, everyone learns how to look spiritual. Emphasis on externals makes it easy for a person to fake it, to comform even while suppressing or hiding inner problems. I know of only two alternatives to hypocrisy: perfection or honesty. Since i have never met a person who loves theLlord our God with all her heart, mind, and soul, and loves her neighbor as herself, I do not view perfection as a realistic alternative. Our only option then is honesty that leads to repentance. As the bible shows, God’s grace can cover any sin.
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At first glance legalism seems hard, but actually freedom in Christ is the harder way. It is relatively easy not to murder, hard to reach out in love; easy to avoid a neighbour’s bed, hard to keep a marriage alive; easy to pay taxes, hard to serve the poor.
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“In the world the christians are a colony of the true home” said Bonhoeffer. Perhaps chrsitians should work harder toward establishing colonies of the kingdom that point to our true home. All too often the church holds a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way. If the world despises a notorious sinner, the church will love her. If the world cuts off aid to the poor and the suffering, the church will offer food and healing . If the world oppresses, the church will raise up the oppressed. If the world shames a social outcast, the church will proclaim God’s reconciling love. If the world seeks profit and self-fulfilment, the church seeeks sacrifice and service. If the world demands retribution, the church dispences grace. If the world splinters into fractions, the church joins together in unity. If the world destroys its enemies, the church loves them. That at least it the vision of the church in the new testament: a colony of heaven in a hostile world. Dwight L Moody said “on one hundred men, one will read the bible; the ninety-nine will read the christian”…”We are perculiar people” wrote Bonhoeffer, which he defined as extraordinary, unusual, that which is not a matter of course. “Jesus was not crucified for being a good citizen, for being just a little nicer than everyone else. The powers of his day correctly saw him and his followers as subversice because they took orders from a higher power than Rome or Jerusalem.”
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As a child, I put on my best behaviour on Sunday mornings, dressed up for God and for the Christians around me. It never occured to me that church was a place to be honest. Now, though, as I seek to look at the world through the lens of grace, I realise that imperfection is the prerequesite for grace. Light only gets in thorugh the cracks. My pride still tempts me to put on the best front, to clean up appearances. “It is easy to acknowledge,” said C. S. Lewis, “but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little – however little – native luminosity? Surely we can’t be quite creatures.” He goes on, “Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become ‘jolly beggars.’”

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Excerpts from the book “What’s so amazing about grace?” by Phillip Yancey.