Accepting a Treasure

To those who read my blog,

It’s been a while since I cared enough about my life to actually do something like this so I am trying to get back into it. I’ve asked a lot of people I respect about which topics they wish to see and today I am going to be addressing a topic given to me by a spiritual friend who has had trouble with the Church lately. I make mention of this because, well, if we are all honest then I think we can say that we have all had trouble with the Church in the past (and possibly presently as well).

The issue she asked me to talk about was acceptance and unconditional love. This is a topic I know well. I was not accepted in my first youth group. I was an outsider that people never really seemed to want around. I was also not accepted by a lot of my peers at the Bible College I went to. There was an “in crowd” that treated me and a lot of others as if we were beneath them. In a way, I’m glad it happened to me. You see, when I became a Christian, it wasn’t because my family members were Christians (although they were) and it wasn’t because I saw how amazing Christian fellowship was, but it was because I had a real encounter with Jesus Christ that I could not ignore. So when I became a Christian, I didn’t need to base my faith on anything except Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t struggle with my faith when people around me were being jerks in the name of Jesus, it just means it was a bit easier for me to deal with because, well, Jesus, man!

Not everyone is that lucky. In fact, most people are not. Most people base their opinion of Jesus on how His followers act. I’m going to come out and say that that is an acceptable thing to base your opinion of a belief system on. If the people who follow the belief system are good people, then it follows that it is a good belief system.

Here’s an example: I’m a brony. That is to say, I am someone who genuinely loves the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Not only do I love that show, the lessons it teaches are lessons I carry with me from day to day and they help me live a good and honest life. One day I was sitting in a café playing chess with someone, and because I was being silly, I boldly proclaimed that the “knight piece” I had was now called “Fluttershy” after my favorite pony from the show. A girl who I did not know turned to me and offered her fist in a friendly “bro hoof” which is basically just a fist bump. She and I talked for a few minutes and then I went back to my game of chess. As me and the person I was with got up to leave, this young woman offered me a picture of Fluttershy if Fluttershy was a human. She had drawn it in the time between finding out that I was a fan of the show and when I got up to leave. She didn’t expect money for it and we never met beforehand. She was generous and kind. I have never encountered that when people found out I was a fan of any other show around. This was unique to me being a brony.

Based on the evidence I gathered from that encounter, I can make an assumption the belief system of My Little Pony promotes kindness and generosity to strangers. If I wanted to make an assumption about Christianity based on my experiences as a teenager and at school, I can safely say that Christians are clique oriented and if you are different or awkward, then no, you do not belong.

That’s a funny spot to arrive at given that Jesus was notorious for hanging out with social outcasts, sinful messes, and the extremely poor. Story after story in the Gospels paint Jesus as the most open man who has ever lived which begs the question, how can we justify not accepting people?

The short answer is that we can’t. It just cannot be done. I now go to a church that doesn’t exclude people. I know because I go there and I wasn’t excluded. If you show the smallest bit of interest at that church, people will come around you and you will have what one of my friends called, a “friendsplosion”. People gather around you and make you feel at home. When I first started going, I didn’t trust anyone there because my experience with Christians for the most part was negative. How could I trust this group of people when no one was genuine with me before? Now I don’t even think about it. Now I know better. These people I spend most of my weekend with are genuinely accepting people. This makes me want to bring people to my church and a few months ago, I actually invited someone from my work. To be honest, I never really felt comfortable inviting people to my church at the last two churches I went to and they were more accepting than my first youth group and my school.

So here is my question: how did the Canadian part of the Church become so exclusive? How did we turn our back on one of the most basic lessons the Bible teaches us? Well, I will attempt to answer this question using examples from my own life. I will also come up with clever names for each category because, why not?

#1 – Silly sinner, friends are for the righteous!

A former professor of mine likes to challenge his students by asking them if they are sinners saved by grace, or saints who sometimes sin. The point of this question is to get you to start re-evaluating who you think you are. When you start out from a place like the sinner, maybe you’ll never get any better because, well, you’re a sinner. But if you start out from a place like the saint, then maybe you can leave the sins behind because you’re a saint!

Regardless of the position, the problem is sin and sin is something that members of the Church should want to get rid of. But how do you do that? A former friend of mine had a simple solution for combating this problem. He would simply stop spending time with you if your life is heading in a bad direction. A year ago, that was me. I was in a bad relationship that I did not want to get out of because it was just easier than being single. I made some attempts to hang out with this guy but he blew me off each time. I called him on it once and he seemed to have a legit excuse, but he kept with the same attitude and I got the hint that something was up. Eventually, I got frustrated and called him on it.

I found out that he was avoiding me because I was in this relationship with this woman and he felt we were growing apart. My life had sin in it and he didn’t want to get dragged into it. So, rather than helping me with my problem, he avoided me. He also told me that he did the same thing with a friend he knew from home who had left the church. That struck me as odd. Here I was, someone who was a close friend to him, and he was avoiding me because it was easier than helping me out of my foolishness. Also, to make matters worse, I was not the first person he did that to.

What I gathered from this was that when trouble arises, it’s better to just walk away than deal with it. Jesus doesn’t operate like that. Peter, on the night Jesus was arrested, cut off a guard’s ear (contrary to Jesus’ peaceful demeanor) and then later Peter lied about even knowing Jesus. Did Jesus leave Peter after that, or did Jesus, when He was resurrected, go to Peter and encourage him? If you don’t know the answer, then you may have a skewed portrait of who Jesus is. Jesus was there for Peter. Jesus loved Peter and wanted the best for him. If someone is going through a tough time, don’t just give up on them. Be there for them. There may come a time when someone refuses help and nothing you do or say will convince them otherwise, but that time comes when you make an effort in the first place.

#2 – The Ugly Duckling

When I say ugly, I don’t just mean outward, although that happens too much in this world. No, I also mean ugly behavior. Whether you’re awkward, violent, or not too bright, if your actions seem different then forget about going to a local church.

In grade 8 I met a kid that I will call Doug. Doug did not know how to act around other people and it was obvious. I went to a school with a lot of social outcasts (it was a school for people who had… “trouble” with their regular school) and he was made an outcast by even them and, I am ashamed to say, even me. Now I was not a Christian at the time, but it does not excuse how monstrous I was to Doug.

I made fun of Doug. If he said something weird, I pointed it out. If he wrote a story, I would criticize it (even if I didn’t read it). If he drew a picture, I would point out every flaw. I was an absolute terrible person to Doug and if I could, I would apologize to him today. I would sit down and buy him coffee and beg for his forgiveness. If he didn’t give me his forgiveness, I would completely understand. There is no amount of gold I could give to that man to make up for how terrible I was to him.

The bigger problem that surrounded this was that I was also awkward. Now, I did not know it at the time, but still, I was (and still am to a degree) an awkward person. How could I, as an awkward person, tear down someone who was also awkward? What kind of person gets pardoned for his bad behavior, but then shows that bad behavior to another? In Matthew 18, Jesus tells a parable about a servant who owes his master some money. The master is begged by the servant to have more time. The master agrees. The first servant then happens upon another servant who owes less money to the first servant. The first servant demands payment from the other servant and will not listen to the cries of the second servant. When the master found out, he was furious and had the first servant jailed for being a huge hypocrite. That was me, by the way. I mean, that story wasn’t literally about me, but it may as well have been. At this school for the socially awkward, I was given a new lease on life to develop into a better person free from people constantly tearing me down. Instead, I chose to tear down someone else.

We have this standard of human being. Advertisements are notorious for this. They’ll show an ad of a tall, skinny, big breasted woman because obviously that is the only type of woman around. Anything less is unacceptable. The Church should not operate like an advertisement. If someone does not exactly fit the bill, then they should be welcomed as much as the person who supposedly does fit the bill.

This is not fake acceptance, either. This is not, “well, we have to accept him so let’s just accept him to his face and talk crap behind his back”. No, this is true, honest to God acceptance, where you love this person despite of (or maybe even because of) their flaw. One of the reasons I may fit in so well at my church is because I’ve heard it said that we’re all a little awkward. Perhaps my awkwardness is endearing to them because they know they are off as well. The good news is, everyone is a bit off. Only one human started off perfect, and He has been keeping it up since!

The ugly duckling from the story ended up being a swan which is much more beautiful than any duck. Shouldn’t we just treat people according to what they could be rather than what they are? Shouldn’t we just love them where they are at, rather than demanding more of them?

#3 - Mr. Wrong

Oh boy, here we go. Mr. Wrong is an interesting fellow. He walks into the church, sits in a seat, listens to the sermon, goes out for lunch with the others and he opens his mouth aaaaaand… crazy-limited-viewpoint! The thing about Mr. Wrong is that normally you will not meet him at a church unless everyone else at that church shares his viewpoint! No, you’ll meet Mr. Wrong on the street or the bus, or while waiting in line for something. It’s not even that he’s wrong about the topic he’s talking about, it’s that he forces his opinion down everyone’s throat and the opinion he has is more of a grey area in the bible than an absolute truth.

Here’s my example. Before going away to college, I attended a men’s retreat. The retreat featured a group of people who believed in a literal seven day creation which means they believe that the earth is only around six thousand years old. Here’s where things got dicey. They also believed that if you didn’t believe in a literal seven days, then you didn’t truly believe the bible. The extension of that argument is that you aren’t a Christian if you don’t believe in a literal seven days.

I was hooked. I bought that load so fast, it could make your head spin! Then I went to college and one of the first views that challenged me was the seven day creation. I was so adamant about proving my view that I did a research paper on it. Let me tell you something. If you ever want to keep believing what you believe in its entirety without the view changing at all, then NEVER do research! Research will be your worst enemy. I emerged from that paper and left the idea of being a seven day creationist behind.

Since then I have been called a non-Christian on several occasions by children, fellow students, and random church people. All because I said that I do not believe in a literal seven day creation. This is weird, because I’m pretty sure Romans 10:9 says that, “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Did I read that correctly? Is there an addition that says, “oh, also if you don’t believe in a literal seven day creation, you’re going straight to the fiery pits of hell”? For those who have never read that verse before I will tell you that no, there is no addition to it. If you want a relationship with Jesus, it is as easy as accepting Him as your lord and believing what He did for you was true!

Does this mean that when someone comes into a local church, we should accept whatever they say? Nope. First off, no one’s theology is perfect. Theology is the study of God. Studies come from man. For the most part, man is not perfect so therefore theology is not perfect. I believe all my theology is right, but that’s because I believe it. If someone were to call me on something, I would have to listen to them and consider their advice because I may be wrong on something. If someone were to walk into the church and tell me that Jesus is one god, the Father is another, and the Spirit is another still (rather than the wonderful one God in three persons that actually are). I would be more than willing to sit down with that person and explain to them the beauty of the Holy Trinity and why that is something that cannot be changed. Does that mean that person should not be accepted by the Church? They should for sure be accepted! Jesus loves them, so why shouldn’t I? Just because someone is wrong about something, it doesn’t mean they are not welcomed by Jesus or Christians and it also doesn’t mean they can’t be a Christian because they totally can be a Christian! God works on hearts all the time and beyond that, opinions change. The person who thinks abortion is awesome one day, may really be sickened by it the next.

#4 – Rejection of the Rejecter!

For this one, I don’t have a story but it was imperative that I talk about it. If you come across someone who isn’t accepting people, you cannot use that as an excuse to not accept them. Jesus accepted everyone. You may run across one of the first three people on this list and they may be doing terrible things, but it is not your place to reject them. Instead, refer to Matthew 18:15 and 16.

I personally have trouble doing this and I need to work hard in order for this completely inappropriate behavior to be eradicated from my life. It may be hard, but it is truly necessary. Everyone deserves to be accepted… even those who do not accept others. If they will not listen to you about their sin, then there is not a lot you can do, but you can at least try.

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I am sure there are other ways people get rejected by the Church, but I hope you get my point by now. Jesus did not come to save us just so we could pick and choose who else could be saved. Instead of hurting people by not accepting them, let’s reach out to everyone using unconditional love. That means it doesn’t matter what their biases are. You love them because that’s what you do if you’re a Christian. And if you don’t love loving them, then find out what is wrong with you instead of finding ways to avoid them.

I titled this blog entry “Accepting a Treasure” because that is what every person is. They are a treasure. It doesn’t matter how much sin they have committed, or how awkward they are, or how different their viewpoint is. They are a treasure and deserve love no matter what. I’m going to work hard to accept people. You should as well!

-Joshua