A couple of summers ago I had the privilege of playing bass in a band at a weeklong ministry event for teenagers.  Before the night services started, everyone involved would get together and we would talk about our vision for the night, the technical aspects of what was going to happen, and some of the things stirring inside of us.

There was one woman with us that week from my local church that is very petite, very joyful, and very loud.  She is one of the most joyful people I’ve ever met.  One of the nights when we got together before the service started, she asked if she could share something with the rest of us.  She went on to say that sometimes people find her annoying because of how happy she is.  She said that people look at the way she praises God and say that she’s fake and too over the top.  She then went on to say that she knows that none of those people have any idea why she is the way she is.  She told us that when she was around 11-years-old she was kicked out of her house and forced to live on the streets.  She started living out of an abandoned warehouse and had resorted to prostituting herself for food and clothing.  She contracted multiple sexually transmitted diseases as a very young girl due to her promiscuous living.  When she became an adult, she got connected to Jesus and she said he transformed her life.  She said that she’s never very bothered when people criticize her for how joyful she is and how much she loves God because none of those people have any idea that when she became a Christian she was healed of all of her diseases and emotional pain, met a loving man who is now her husband, and had beautiful children that didn’t receive the diseases from her past life at birth.  She said that those people that criticize her have no idea why she praises God like she does because they have no idea what she’s been redeemed from.  She said that if those people knew God the way she did, they would be as happy as she was.

When she got done telling us her story, we pretty much just sat there in silence.  What do you say after that?

_

The country music stars Johnny Cash and June Carter were both renowned for their fantastic marriage to one another, and I’ve heard a lot of people talk and even write songs about wanting know extravagant love like they had for one another.  That’s nice and all, but like most things, there is more to the story than what we see on the surface.  Johnny and June both went through messy divorces before marrying each other.  Johnny had a drug addiction, and once while he was high he tried to kill himself while living in a cave.  When Johnny surfaced from the cave, June and her parents moved in with him and helped him through his addiction.  There are quite a few stories like that about the two of them.  People want to know love like Johnny and June had, but the truth is, Johnny and June went through a lot of crappy stuff together.  I’m willing to bet that their love for one another had a lot to do with the unpleasant things they got through.  Beautiful things generally aren’t easy.

_

Some of the original followers of Jesus used to tell this story about Jesus eating with an official when a woman came and washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and expensive perfume and then dried them with her hair.  The story goes that the official tells Jesus that he wouldn’t let her wash his feet if he knew who she was and what she had done.  Jesus responded by saying that a person who has been forgiven of a lot will be more grateful than someone who has been forgiven of a little.  I think what Jesus was saying was that the official had no right to judge her because she knew redemption in a way that he didn’t.  Her story was different than his.  She knew Jesus in a different way.

I think that a lot of us want to live good stories and be better people, but are generally unwilling to go through some of the hardship necessary to make our lives beautiful.

_

No one gets through life without hardship.  We all come out of the womb crying.  Everyone around you has a history with some gruesome details.  No one has ever known a perfect life.  When we come up against suffering in life, it’s easy to get stuck asking why things happened the way they did.  It’s easy to let past hurts stop us from hoping for a better future.  It’s easy to feel completely and utterly crushed by the hard things that happen in life.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus gives one of his most famous sermons, and he starts it by saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”  Jesus is with the hurting.  Jesus is all about healing the brokenness.  He is in the business of making beautiful things out of the dust and death.  Jesus is about resurrection.  The only thing about this is that in order for something to be resurrected, it has to first know death.

Here is where the difficulty lies.  We want to know the resurrection of Jesus, but we want to stay away from the suffering.  We want to experience the good without knowing the bad.  And it really just doesn’t seem to work that way.  Hard stuff happens to everyone.  But I have found that when we invite Jesus to help us with our struggles, the abandoned, diseased prostitute becomes a loved, healthy mother.  And the broken-hearted, suicidal addict becomes a laughing, loving husband.  The outcasts become loved and accepted.  When we invite Jesus into our sufferings, he brings healing.  He makes our stories beautiful.  So at the end of the day, we are a little bit more joyful than the rest, and we learn how to love deeper, and our broken pasts become sweet perfume at the feet of Jesus.

Once one of my friends was telling me about this German Christian band.  He was telling me about how different German culture is from American culture, and how this band’s music is a good example of it.  He said that in one of their songs they say something along of the lines of “We ‘f-ing’ love Jesus.”  And it’s not that the band is trying to be vulgar or inappropriate; the “f-word” simply isn’t a vulgar thing to the band because their culture didn’t teach them that it was.  To them, it’s like saying, “I really love Jesus.”  I have always thought that that is a pretty funny thing, because Christians generally tell you that you should love Jesus, and that you shouldn’t say the f-word, and this band is doing both of those things at the same time.

            It makes me wonder if Christians would judge that band for using a swear word in their song about Jesus.  I think a lot of people would try to look at the situation from a strictly moral standpoint and say that it is just wrong to cuss, period, and not even consider the condition of the band’s heart.

            We really like churches to be neat and tidy.  We like it when people follow a moral code.  We tell people not to cuss or listen to “ungodly” music, and many Christians don’t do those things.  If you look up the literal meaning of some of the things said in the Bible, you find that it says some pretty shocking stuff.  In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah refers to human morality as used tampons, but we like our Bible translations to say “filthy rags.”  And in one of his letters, Paul refers to something as dog poop, but we like the verse to simply read “rubbish.”  We like church and Christianity to look and sound nice, because we want our lives to look and sound nice.

            The only problem with this is that our lives don’t always look or sound nice.  As hard as we try to be successful and lovely and beautiful, sometimes we still fail, are unpleasant, and feel ugly.  Sometimes our lives simply feel like they’re falling apart.  So we smile and say that we’re fine, the marriage is good, and the kids are doing well in school, when in reality it all seems to be crumbling apart.  We can’t control the reality of our lives, so we try to control the appearance of our lives, because God forbid someone finds out that we are human, too.

            Here is a shocker: No one actually has it all together.  No one is actually cool.  No one actually makes enough money to be happy.  No one actually gets everything they want.  No one avoids heartbreak.  The truth is that we are all stumbling, weird, and wondering why.  It’s much easier to have a good self-image when you realize that everyone else is struggling, too.  It’s not a morbid way of looking at things; it’s just the true condition that we find ourselves in.  We aren’t perfect beings.

            And most of us don’t really like to openly admit this, so we pretend.  Well, pretending never really helped anybody live a healthy life, and if you were to ask around, you’d find that pretending is one of the main reasons that a lot of people don’t like Christianity.  Many say that Christians are fake and hypocritical, and let’s be honest… are we?

            The message of Christ is one of healing.  The Bible teaches that through the death and resurrection of Christ, we can be made more whole every day.  Jesus wants to treat our wounds.  And one thing you often find with doctors is that they have to see wounds before they can treat them.  If a patient refuses to let a doctor see an ailment, treatment is much more difficult.  Maybe the same is true about our lives.  If we want our lives to begin healing, maybe exposing our wounds and brokenness to God is the start.  If we want to preach the good news of Jesus, we have to be honest about what’s going on in our hearts and in our lives, even if it is unpleasant stuff.

            If we want our lives and churches to be neat and tidy, we will either become disappointed or end up excluding the hurting and broken among us, but if we admit our inadequacies and inconsistencies, and still embrace each other, then we can start healing together.  When we can expose our wounds to one another and still be affectionate, maybe that is when we will learn to love.  If we want to live as whole people, it’s important to cultivate a community where people feel free to be their true selves, no matter what that looks like.  If people knew that they could come to God as they are, whether they are cursing German bands, homosexuals, convicts, prostitutes, tax collectors, Christians, or simply people with a lot of questions, I think we would find that God is much more gracious about our shortcomings than we are, and is much more interested in helping us than we think he is.  According to the Bible, God has a lot of love for the broken people.  That is you and me and everyone else.  If God loves the broken people, shouldn’t we?

I hear a lot about husbands who try to assert power over their wives.  There are plenty of stories out there about men trying to manipulate women into mindlessly submitting to them for their personal satisfaction.  Here is a famous example in Christian circles: “The Bible tells you to submit to me, so you’re being disobedient to God if you don’t.”  Whenever I hear about men making comments like this, all I can think about is how that part of the Bible also tells husbands to lay down their lives for their wives (which seems to be less popular among men).  That part of the bible actually compares men to a perfect, loving God who redeems an adulterous whore, the church.  I can’t help but think that if men want to use scripture to control their wives, they should also include the part about them laying down their own lives.

            A similar situation is parents beating their kids.  It makes me want to cringe.  It generally goes that the kid in some way isn’t complying with the parent’s wishes, so the parent assumes that the kid will respect them if there is some fear of punishment involved.  So when the kid disobeys, makes a mistake, doesn’t perform adequately, or in some cases just wets the bed, the parent assumes that this kid just needs a good lesson.  The parent in this situation assumes that they need to establish their power over the situation with a display of violence, but I think that most people would agree that any person who violently beats a child is an incredibly weak individual.  A husband might be more powerful than his wife, but if he uses his strength to harm her, he shows himself to be incredibly weak.  He is strong, but he is weak.  It takes no strength to hurt others.  I’ve noticed that humans are pretty good at that already.

            Jesus had this pretty cool thing he used to say when people would try to assert power over others.  He would say, “The greatest among you will be your servant.”  For Jesus, power was an issue of the heart.  If you wanted to be king, then Jesus would say to serve other people.  He taught that the best kind of authority is found in giving.  So when that husband is trying to get his way by manipulating his wife, and when the father is raising his hand to beat his child, Jesus is essentially asking, “What kind of power are you interested in?  Because the greatest among you will be your servant.”

            I’ve found that it’s pretty easy to submit to someone that you know loves you.  For instance, I have always had fantastic parents.  Growing up, they were always really quick to show me that they loved me, so whenever they gave hard advice or disciplined me, I knew that they were interested in my welfare, not some household regime.  It was easy to submit to my parents, because in a way, they submitted to me.  It’s not that they gave up their authority, but rather that they used their authority to love me.  They made some big sacrifices so that I could have a good life.  How do you reject something like that?

            I’ve noticed that sometimes in relationships we think that someone has to make a first move in order for things to go right (and we generally think it should be the other person).  Is it that the child is to submit to the parent, or that the parent is to love the child?  Is it that the wife is to submit to the husband, or is the husband supposed to love the wife?  I think the only correct answer to questions like these is “yes.”  Should I make the first move, or should they make the first move?  Yes.  I think that there’s a lot of power in the idea of mutual submission.  The only tricky thing is that we can only do our part.  I can’t make you love me, and you can’t make me love you.  The only part that I can control is the part where I give up control.  The only part of relationships that we can affect is the part where we are affectionate.  When people start living this way, you find that you don’t have to struggle for power nearly as much.  When parents love their children, children find it easier to obey.  And when children aren’t so rebellious, parents find it easier to give their kids freedom.  When husbands truly love their wives, wives naturally respect their husbands.  When you and I can start loving others, maybe that is when we will get the authority that Jesus spoke of.

After all, the greatest among you will be your servant.

Once I was in a Bible class in high school and my teacher asked everyone in the class to pick out their favorite Bible verses.  A lot of people picked out the staple Bible verses about how we can do all things and how God has a plan and so on.  It’s not that there’s anything wrong with those verses or anything.  On the contrary, they are probably so popular because they give a lot of people hope.  It’s just that unfortunately, some verses can get overused and sometimes people forget what they even really mean, and they just say it’s their favorite verse because they know it the best.

We went around the room talking about our favorite verses and my teacher read his favorite verse, which was a really nice poem, and eventually we got to me.  I read my verse aloud for everyone: “Paul writes in Galatians 5:12 – ‘As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!’”

My Bible teacher seemed a little frustrated that my favorite verse in the Bible was about circumcision and castration, so I went on to explain.  Bear with me.  This small history lesson is important.

You see, the Hebrews and Jews of the Old Testament had a strict set of laws they had to follow in order to be accepted in the community.  These laws were extremely extensive, ranging from anti-theft laws to how to keep yourself physically clean.  One Jewish custom stated that in order to be part of the “assembly,” a man had to be circumcised.

Hundreds of years later when Jesus came onto the scene, the new movement of Christians started noticing that Gentiles (uncircumcised, non-Jewish people) were joining the movement.  Then leaders like Paul started saying things like “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”  It made no difference who you were or where you were from simply because Jesus was bigger than all of the man-made distinctions.

When this new truth that Jesus is for everyone started gaining momentum, of course there were some people who preferred the old way of doing things.  These people started preaching that if you wanted to be accepted by Jesus, you still had to be circumcised.  These are the people Paul is addressing in Galatians 5:12, the verse I chose in Bible class, when he says, “As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!”

Most people, upon reading this verse, assume that Paul is just being sarcastic because he disapproves of their message, but there seems to be more going on here.  In the same set of laws that said men had to be circumcised, there was another law that said that any man who had been emasculated was no longer welcome in the assembly (Deuteronomy 23:1).  Paul was raised under this set of laws, so he would have known the significance of emasculation in the culture he was in.  So when Paul says it might be better for the circumcision-preaching people to emasculate themselves, maybe he is actually saying, “As for those guys who are preaching the law, I wish they would just break the law!”

This is obviously really revolutionary.  (And it’s good to remember that this is the same guy who said it was good to respect authority.)  Many people find Christianity to be unattractive because of all the rules that pastors and church members enforce - the wear this, the don’t do that, the sing it this way, etc.  And who can blame them?  You can’t change hearts just by changing actions.

What Paul proposes is that this new version of Judaism that they called Christianity is not another set of rules or regulations, but something much deeper.  Paul puts forth the idea that when it comes to how we behave, Jesus is solely interested in our hearts.  He’s not about enforcing a law; he’s about healing the hearts that make laws necessary.  He’s not about pointing a condemning finger; Jesus is interested in fixing us.  Which is why Paul goes on to say in his letter to the Galatians to live by the Spirit of God.  He says that if we live by the Spirit, we won’t have to worry about the law.  People led by the Spirit will naturally do what it right.

So what does this mean for us?  I suppose that one thing it means is that judging others won’t get anyone anywhere.  When we see someone who doesn’t meet our cultural standard, the way of Jesus isn’t to judge them, it is to show love and know that Christianity is for the Jews and Gentiles alike.  The Spirit of God is interested in hearts.  And if we want to make the deep work of Jesus a matter of do this and don’t do that, it may be just as fruitful to break the rules.

I gave a speech at my high school graduation that seemed to be pretty well received, and I had quite a few people ask me to email it to them or to post it on my blog, so here it is, with a couple of minor revisions.  And just in case anyone else has read the same books that I have, yes, I did indeed steal direct quotes from a couple of books.  Nonetheless:

Think back to one of the happiest moments in your life.

You might remember that breathtaking view from the water’s edge, or the taste of the exquisite meal from that sophisticated restaurant you could barely afford, or maybe you remember the smell of that particular perfume she was wearing.  It’s interesting how we can remember those particular details about occasions, but the view, or the restaurant, or the smell isn’t always what makes those events in life memorable.  When you think about it, you never remembered that ordinary hospital to be quite so glorious until the day your baby girl was born there. And that church building had quite a different air to it the day that it was housing your wedding ceremony.  When we really look at the moments in our lives that are significant enough to become memories, they all have one thing in common: intimacy.  Whether it’s with others, ourselves, God, or even nature, we all have this deep-seated need for closeness, love, and respect.

We all have a yearning for right relationship.

We’re relational beings, created to experience community.  We always seem to be looking for another being to see us as we truly are, with all of our inadequacies and inconsistencies, and to simply say “Me too.”  We are continually searching for some sort of vague intimacy.

And the only reason we search for something is because there is something missing.

At times when we look around us, we see death, experience disappointment, and sometimes fail ourselves, and when it all starts to pile up, sometimes we’re just left asking,

Why is it all so broken?

When we really look around us, we see pain and dysfunction.

One billion people in the world don’t have access to clean water.

According to UNICEF, every seven seconds, somewhere in the world a child under the age of five dies of hunger.

And it’s estimated that there are more slaves in the world today than there ever has been in human history.

When we see that kind of injustice, starvation, and genocide, we know in our hearts that there is a way that things are supposed to be,

and it’s not that way.

We may not always be able to describe it in words, but we feel it in it every fiber of our being.

We know that relationship is broken.

So most people live with this underlying itch that they can never quite find, and consequently never quite scratch.  They go day-to-day unsatisfied and searching.  That’s where you and I come in.

When we take that look at all the brokenness around us, it can be easy to become cynical, passive, angry, or even aggressive.  When we see and experience despair and misery, it can be easy to become hopeless.

But consider something…  Men like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and César Chávez all saw the immense brokenness around them, and instead of quietly allowing for entire races of people to be oppressed and violated, they stood for humanity, and brought healing to nations.  Instead of passively observing the hell in the earth, they countered with heaven.

The truth is, we have all experienced the brokenness of society.  We have all lost things important to us.  Whether we are under national Communist oppression or we got into a fight with a family member recently, we all feel somewhat disconnected from each other.

This brings forth a decision for all of us as individuals.  When we see the brokenness,

will we become selfish and cynical?

or will we pursue the humanity that we dream of, but don’t see?

If I’m honest, I’ve seen myself move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about me. To spend and waste time as though I had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.  I’ve met with the brokenness and responded with cynicism.  I know what it’s like to treat sacred things with contempt, but I’ve learned that life doesn’t have to be like that.

There’s another way.

The first Christians had a term for what happens when people properly respect and acknowledge the sanctity of life in those around them. In his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul talks about a group of people who were previously divided because of race, background, wealth, socio-economic status, worldview, and religion, and in this new church, they find themselves united because they’ve all become followers of the resurrected Jesus Christ.  All of the old categories simply don’t work anymore.  This new commonality, this new bond, is simply bigger than all of the things that had previously kept them apart.

The first Christians called this the “new humanity.”

This idea affirms that the longing we all have for the restoration of things goes somewhere.  If we research this “new humanity” concept further in the Bible, we read that this man named Jesus from Nazareth came to “restore all things to himself” – to recreate humanity as whole, to restore Creation.

In the Bible, the prophet Isaiah compared humanity to wine, saying that it was once so pure, but had since become adulterated and watered-down.  Then later, this same nation of watered-down wine meets Jesus, whose first miracle is what?  Turning leftover water into choice wine at a marriage ceremony.  By turning the water into wine, Jesus wasn’t only showing that he’s worthy of attention; he was essentially saying that he would take this diluted wine, this broken humanity, and give it a rebirth.

He’s saying He can heal the brokenness.

The truth is, there’s a lot of controversy and hardship that come with healing the brokenness.  Gandhi and MLK were assassinated; Jesus was crucified.  These people understood something of this new humanity. They understood it was something worthy of sacrifice and that it was fatal to ignore.

And if it would have been fatal for them to ignore it, maybe it would be fatal for us, too.

So as I stand here and reflect on the way that my life has unfolded, I cannot help but to think of the humanity we all long for.  I know that things in the world aren’t as they should be, but I also know that it doesn’t have to stay that way.  We all have two options before us…

To sit and advance in the brokenness,

Or to take part in this new humanity that this strange and magnificent man Jesus Christ has started.

People have been choosing the brokenness for thousands of years.  And we’ve seen the results.

Entire races thrown into captivity

Widows and orphans sold into slavery

Whole people groups suffering at the hands of their brothers

Oppression

Destruction.

We know where the brokenness leads.

But what if we decided to embrace the idea of this new humanity?  What if we were willing to put ourselves aside and live for something, or someone, greater than ourselves?

This would mean that there is hope for the world you and I live in.  It would mean that the need for relationship that’s engrained on our hearts could be satisfied.

It would mean that we could put a stop to the suffering and protect what we know to be precious.

This active love would mean that if we get on board with the redemptive mission of this controversial man, Jesus Christ, and lay down our lives for our brothers,

we might even see this broken humanity raised from the dead.

Writing can be a very arduous task sometimes.  Sometimes you have something really profound to say and can’t seem to say it well, and other times you have absolutely nothing to say but know that if you did you would know how to say it.  There are certain ways that writers start and end sentences to make themselves sound really good, but most writers only have so many of these techniques.  I guess sometimes as a writer you don’t always believe yourself.  You know how to pep up your essay or poem or whatever to sound nice, but sometimes you secretly know that you aren’t really saying anything important.  It’s not that we never have anything to write about; it’s just an inconsistent process.  I think a lot of writers like to think that they always have really meaningful stuff to say and write about, and because of this, we get disappointed when we’re actually just full of hot air.

            I think that this issue I have of wanting to have all the answers and be talented has less to do with being a writer, and more to do with just being a human.  As humans, our basic instincts tell us to shoot for success – to be awesome and super and dependable.  And quite frankly, I just don’t think we can do it.  Sometimes we don’t have the answers.  Sometimes we aren’t good enough.  This simple fact plagues a lot of people.  Not to be morbid, but some people obsess over their inability to the extent that they revert to suicide.  I know that most people don’t seem to be on the verge of taking their lives, but I think that suicide is merely one extreme on a continuum on which we all lie.  We have all experienced disappointment and regret.  At the end of the day, things in our life don’t always go the way we plan for them to.  We want control and don’t have it.  We want success and don’t achieve it.  I like the way a guy named Paul once put it.  He said, “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it.  Instead, I do what I hate… I have discovered this principle of life – that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.”

            I never want to sound like a religious bigot or anything, and I’m aware that talking about Jesus and more specifically his church can bring up some legitimate bad feelings for some people, and as hard as I try sometimes to “write for everyone,” I really can’t separate in my mind real life issues from who Jesus is.  When I talk about psychology, I can’t help but think that Jesus is right in the middle of it.  And when I talk about wisdom, I just can’t figure it out without bringing Jesus into it.  That being said, the aforementioned Paul used to say that he found consolation in life even though he always messed up.  He once made the statement that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.”  There has been a lot of debate and discussion about what he meant when he said this, but I just feel like Paul was essentially saying that Jesus came and made us ok.  Jesus knew we weren’t good enough and still thought we were worth dying for.

            This puts some of us in a really awkward position.  We live in a world where a high level of excellence is expected of us from so many places.  Sometimes the need for acceptance can consume us so deeply that we will do some pretty drastic things to get others to accept us.  We live in a society that puts so much value on performance that we can become conditioned to think that our worth is based on our success.  Then we have Jesus who looks at us with all of our inadequacies and brokenness and says that he wants us as we are – failures and all.  I don’t know about anyone else, but that boggles my mind a little bit.

            Many people hold the view that the ultimate point of life is reaching a destination.  For some the destination is a secure financial life; for others it’s starting a family.  It’s easy to think that life will finally be good and easy when we obtain that thing, whatever that thing is.  But most of the time when we finally get that thing, we realize that there is another thing, and then another, and so on.  The problem with this way of thinking is that these things, even if we can obtain them, don’t seem to bring us the satisfaction we expect them to.  Viewing life as a destination can lead to a lot of disappointment because it distracts us from the initial truth that we’re on a journey.

            When Jesus welcomes people to follow him, he’s not asking people to reach a destination of legal religiosity or emotional stability.  Jesus invites people to join him on a journey.  A big, lovely mess of people all deciding that Jesus makes them good enough.  When we can accept that kind of love, we learn that Jesus is not only interested in accepting us the way we are; he’s also interested in making us better people and giving us better lives.  When we can accept that Jesus likes us, we learn that it’s possible to be relaxed inside the tension of life.  After all, maybe I don’t have to always have something to write about.  Maybe our value is found in our human identity, not in what we produce.  Maybe it’s ok to be the broken and hurting mish-mash.  Jesus certainly seems to think so.

The other day I was enjoying a sandwich from Chik-fil-A and I started thinking about how they are closed on Sundays.  I think it’s amazing that Chik-fil-A is closed a whole day of the week, yet remains to be one of the most successful fast food chains in America.  The CEO is a Christian and has chosen to close all Chik-fil-A stores on Sundays to honor the Christian tradition known as the Sabbath.  A lot of times I feel like people can be pretty quick to question religious ideals when imposed publicly, but I’ve noticed that virtually no one raises an eyebrow at Chik-fil-A’s Sabbaths.

I’ve also noticed that (as far as I can tell) Chik-fil-A has never put much emphasis on defending their taking of the Sabbath.  They make good sandwiches, so people buy them, and not many questions are asked.

Now, if someone had no particular respect for Christianity and really liked Chick-fil-A, at some point in their hypothetical life they might say something like, “I don’t know about that Christianity Sabbath stuff, but there is no denying that Chik-fil-A makes some good sandwiches.”

Sometimes I feel like some churches in America spend more time working on their advertising campaign than they do on what they are advertising.  There is nothing wrong with cool lights, a great band, or a nice stage, but when those things become obsessively important to a church, I sometimes question if the point of it all is to heal people’s lives or to entertain them.  Honestly, if church is merely a competition with “the world” over who can better entertain people into a certain worldview, the church will lose a lot.  The last church service I went to had powerpoints with fixed images of crosses and palm trees for backgrounds and a few lights on trusses.  For their recent 360 Tour, U2 had a freaking spaceship.

My thought is this: If a church could have an authentic family that anyone can join where people really love each other and give to the community and cry with each other when loved ones die and laugh together when things are good and hold each other accountable to live good lives, they wouldn’t have to entertain anyone.  A beautiful community like that would speak for itself.  I don’t think love and acceptance like that have to be advertised.  I think people would just want to be a part of that.  Jesus came to make people whole again, and as far as I can tell, big lights, fancy music, and expensive sets are not at all required for that to happen.  People don’t need to be entertained to experience love and acceptance.  Truly satisfying things can speak for themselves.

Chik-fil-A’s advertising campaign would be pointless if their food was terrible.  And on the other hand, an advertising campaign might also be pointless if their food was absolutely delicious.  Take Starbucks for example… How many advertisements have you ever seen for Starbucks?  You can probably count them on one hand.  Yet, Starbucks is a billion dollar company.  People actually like their coffee, and it is readily available, so people buy it and tell their friends about it.  Advertising isn’t necessary.  The coffee speaks for itself.

I don’t think that church is much different.  Imagine if people said about Christianity, “I’m not sure how I feel about Jesus, but I can’t deny that those Christians are doing some great things.” The truth is that people generally aren’t interested in awesome lights, cool music, or even trendy belief systems.  Whether they know or not, people are simply looking for love and acceptance.  So when churches spend so much time and energy advertising about how awesome they are, all I want to ask is, “I hear what you are telling me, but what are you selling me?  Are you here to entertain me, or is this Jesus guy really among you?”  Jesus doesn’t need to be advertised, because if you brew him right, his coffee speaks for itself.

Not too long ago I started a blog and for whatever reason I only posted one entry. After that, it seemed to just trail off into the uninspiring abyss.  I think part of the reason for that was that I made the blog’s theme so specific that it boxed me in and made it hard to think and write freely.  It was like writing a book without knowing what it’s about.  So I stopped that blog and started this one in an attempt to be little more true to my muse.  I suppose that this post isn’t an “entry” per se… it’s just that the first post on a blog is by nature slightly awkward because you feel like it should be an introduction, but a blog is very episodic in nature and follows no linear format, so it doesn’t really require an introduction.  It’s like the first episode of Seinfeld or Friends: Do you get straight to the funny stuff, or do you introduce the characters?