Over the last few months, a lot of my thinking has been changing. First, I read Brennan Manning’s “Ragamuffin Gospel” and still reading through it again. Then I started really reading my Bible for me again. Sure, I read it for messages, bible studies and the like, but not because I just wanted to hear from my Father (in Heaven). Now, I also have my little Son, Aidan, whom I love dearly. In a few short months, my life has been flip-flopped, tilted and turned upside down and shaken (like an etch-a-sketch when you are done drawing on it and want to start over). In trying to be the best dad I can to my little one, I’ve also begun analyzing my choices a bit more. I want to be a good example to him. I take it that the first few years is kinda a dry run before he is old enough to look to me for guidance. I’ll need all the practice I can get.
But in realizing these things about myself, I am finding out more than ever just how broken I am in places. Places where I thought I had my act together are in reality places of utter failure. A funny thing has happened though. The more I am realizing my brokenness, lack of faith and failures, the more I am seeing that God’s grace is sufficient for me. I used to laugh at people when they called Christianity a crutch. It is a crutch, and I won’t be too proud to use it rather than hobble along painfully on broken legs.
I have now come to a turning point. I have put resumes out all over the internet, called churches around the country and done all I can do to find a ministry job doing what I feel God has called me to do. None of it has come to pass. At one point, I got so fed up with job boards because I was posting on them and reading them so much, that I decided that I should make my own (www.minitriki.com).
I now feel that many churches do not meet people where they are. Sure, they say they do, but you walk in and they have their little agenda that won’t budge or give you a guilt trip when you can’t be at every small group meeting. Immediately, there is a stigma if you smoke or drink or live with someone who you are not married to. I grew up in churches all my life, went to a Bible College and I know that if I stood outside of a church and smoked a cigarette, I might as well have lit the place on fire and offered up a human sacrifice. I don’t smoke, but I’ve known people so caught up with trying to quit and the stigma that the church has attached to smoking that they never understood that Jesus wants a relationship with them first and foremost.
I’m not saying that the body isn’t a temple of the Holy Spirit or preaching the heresy of license (basically means to just keep on sinning to let grace abound all the more). But we care more about the sin in someone’s life than we do about introducing them to Jesus Christ. Homosexuality is a sin. Scripture clearly says it is. But somehow no one loves the sinner anymore because the sin is so stigmatized. Are they welcomed? You don’t take a drunk and stand him up (if he can stand up) as an example of Godliness any more than you would a homosexual. I will not affirm sin. I will affirm grace though.
Grace says “Come on in” “You are welcomed” or even “I struggle too”. But we can’t ignore the Word of God on this matter. When we encounter Christ, there is a transformation that should happen. Jesus told the woman caught in adultery “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Jesus didn’t say “I don’t condem you, so go back to your lover”. But we needen’t be the other extreme either and picking up stones to take the matter into our own hands. God’s grace is sufficient.
I told a guy yesterday that he “probably cared more about his smoking addiction than God did and that God wants a relationship with him more than he wants him to go cold turkey. If God really comes into his life and works in him, then God can take care of the smoking.”
Anyway, all these thoughts have led me to the belief that we need a church that is about the smokers, the down and outs, the poorly dressed, the tax collectors, the smelly fisherman (oops, I went a little first cenury Palestine there) the average guys, who through grace and a transforming encounter with Jesus Christ can be called Sons of God, coheirs with Christ. If we admit it, we are all a little broken anyway. Here is our power. Aknowledge our brokeness and confess our sins, repent and believe that Jesus really loves us enough to die for us. To offer us this grace we could not earn through any means of our own.
I am still seeing if people are interested in being a part of this unique ministry. Check out the link below for more information.
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After the mass, the priest was right outside, shaking hands and greeting people, and I asked him if he could hear my confession. A few minutes after that, we were in a corner of the chapel.
“Bless me Father,” I said softly, “I have sinned. I was impure.” I hesitated.
“With yourself?”
“With another woman.”
His eyes sparkled, I swear, and for just a moment I thought he would say, “You’d be surprised how often I’ve heard that.” For my penance, He asked me to say a Hail Holy Queen, and a Fatima prayer. When I had said my act of contrition, I asked him if I could ask a question.
“Of course.”
“Is my absolution valid?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“How could I be contrite and penitent? As soon as I leave, I’m going to my girlfriend’s apartment to do it all again. Every lick and tickle of it.”
He stood up, taking the stole from around his neck. He extended a hand toward me, and I stood.
“Do you remember in the gospels, when Jesus was walking across the lake?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Do you remember what happened when He told Peter to come to Him?”
“Peter took three steps on the water and went sploosh!”
“Was Jesus surprised?”
I thought about that a moment.
“No.” I said.
“Love your girlfriend, and trust Christ to pull you out of the water every time you fall. Just don’t ever turn away from Him.”
This, Stacy, is what is referred to as the Heresy of License. Jesus told the woman caught in adultery “Go and leave your life of Sin.” I John 3:5-7 also mentions this:
The word repent literally means to turn away and go a different direction.
Our failure to do so is why grace exists. We are a fallen people. But to deliberately sin is rebellion whatever way you look at it. The Old Testament says “For rebellion is like the sin of divination (or witchcraft) and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.” (I Samuel 15:23)
The encounter with Jesus leaves us no room for getting around the problem of sin. We must turn away from it and turn toward the one who extends us this grace. We can’t have it both ways.