Entry #10
This series was originally published on my socials in 2021. My beliefs and opinions have changed in some ways since then, but these words are still meaningful and relevant to who I am and what I believe today.
Every year at ACU, the business department held a competition in which teams of students would compete against one another to see who could create the most profitable product.
My favorite one was a t-shirt one of the groups (must have been a bunch of Enneagram 8s) made one year that said,
“Jesus turned water into wine. ACU turned it back.”
As you can imagine, it was a hot item on campus. I was too chicken to buy one myself (I blame the nine in me), but it made all of us collectively laugh and scratch our heads. I mean, the shirt had a point.
Jesus DID turn water into wine. So what was the deal with wine being the worst?
It’s not even what I WAS taught but what I WASN’T taught that led me to believe all who drank alcohol were terrible people. Was it ever explicitly stated that drinking is evil? I don't think so? But kids have a way of filling in blanks unless we fill them in for them.
What happens is this:
Kids see and hear…
WE don’t drink.
WE don’t have sex.
WE don’t say certain words.
WE believe certain things are right and certain things are wrong. No matter what.
Therefore, those who do are bad.
You are an US. They are a THEM.
Church, we have to do a better job with our messaging.
When kids grow up in a culture in which these things are said over and over again, what kids hear is, “We are the good guys. They are the bad guys.”
And that is anything but the Gospel.
Our kids need to hear it said out loud that the world is not our enemy.
Should we look different? YES. But not in the way we're taught—by abstaining from all the "bad sins." We should be counter-cultural in the way we love others and treat others and include others, in the way our hearts breaks for others circumstances, in the way we joyfully serve others, in the way we forgive and have compassion for pain and heartache and sin BECAUSE WE KNOW WE ARE THE CHIEF OF SINNERS.
The moment that temple veil was torn in two was the moment US and THEM was no longer. The cross made a bridge for all of us, every single person on this planet to know him.
After a school dance in high school I remember walking out of the cafeteria doors (super classy venue) with a friend to head home and a girl I knew was standing outside with a group of students handing out papers.
I looked down to see that it was a pamphlet that said, “DO YOU KNOW JESUS CHRIST?”
I turned to my friend, who had also been handed one, and said, “Are you kidding me?” I felt like Emma Stone in Easy A, dirty and judged and so turned off by Christians, a group I was in fact a member of.
“She knows me! We prayed at the pole together a month ago. Does she think I’m ‘wayward’ because I went to a school dance? And is she trying to save my soul with a PIECE OF PAPER? Say it to my face!” I said to my friend, not so subtly in case she was still in earshot. I didn’t handle it well. And I did not, in fact, want her to say it to my face.
Looking back now, I know none of those kids had bad intentions. I know that decision began with a heart to “save the lost among us” and never once were they hoping to heap shame on anyone. They were innocent, earnest teenagers.
But at the time I thought, “Is this how those outside of the church feel all the time? Like they aren’t good enough? Judged and shamed by those on the inside?”
Our human nature, or maybe just our Christian-ness, has a tendency to identify the sin in everyone else, which has a tendency to build walls. But isn’t scripture a story of walls being torn down? Of veils being torn in two? Of the divide between Jew and Gentile being bridged by a cross?
I just can’t fathom why we’ve created this system of “othering” those outside our walls based on their sin, when we’ve got so much sin festering inside.
Jesus says, “Judge not, and you will not be judged.
Condemn not, and you will not be condemned.”
But we do.
We sort and divide and categorize based on sin.
We decide who’s allowed in and who’s not based on sin.
We determine who is worthy and who is not based on sin.
JUDGE NOT. CONDEMN NOT.
What that says to me is, WE DON’T HAVE TO DECIDE. WE DON’T HAVE TO FIGURE IT ALL OUT. IT’S NOT UP TO US.
Jesus tells us to stop making it so complicated. God is judge and jury. Not me, not you.
And that is really, really good news. Because that frees me to love everyone without agenda or fear of loving the wrong way.
