Offensive Jesus

by Aaron Wilkinson

I occasionally make trips into the downtown and pass by crowds of the homeless, mentally disabled, physically disabled, and otherwise down on their luck. I know I’m supposed to be compassionate but it’s difficult. Admitting that it’s difficult doesn’t change my responsibilities, but I acknowledge that I feel very uncomfortable around these people.

I also pass by smokers, drinkers, angry people, rude people, smelly people, and people who dress without any sense of modesty. They aren’t down on their luck, I think to myself. They aren’t victims of a broken world, they are irresponsible, stupid, immoral people. I start to get angry. I am deeply offended that people like that exist.

I only moved into the downtown a year ago. Before then I was a child in a good Christian home, later working the summers at a good Christian summer camp, and then going to a good private Christian university. I wasn’t completely ignorant of the ugly side of the human condition but I almost never had to think about it and certainly didn’t have to regularly face it.

Now it’s becoming more and more apparent to me just what scum human beings can be and as this becomes clearer and clearer another idea becomes more prominent in tandem – these people are made in God’s image and he loves them.

Matthew 25 tells us that, to Jesus, the way we treat others is the way we treat him. When I was re-reading this chapter, I was surprised to discover that I had forgotten a part of it. I remembered the parts where he talks about feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, and clothes to the naked. That all sounds very good. But he also talks about visiting criminals and comforting them in prison.

So I’m to understand that God is so intimately connected with inmates (and who knows what horrible things they did to end up there) that I am to see them as the image of God and treat them as I would treat him? I previously thought I understood this but it only occurs to me now how scandalous – how offensive that idea is.

And it’s not just that. The entire story of Jesus is one big scandal. The rightful king of the universe gets born to a disreputable mother in a place where animals poop, condescends to be baptized by John (despite his protests), lives his life as a homeless weirdo, spends his time with corrupt government employees and adulterers, washes his disciples smelly feet like a servant, and then gets humiliated and killed. If I were to see this guy on my block, I think I’d cross to the other side of the road.

Imagine if some guy walked into your church, grabbed the baptismal font full of consecrated water for a holy sacrament, turned that water into beer, and gave it to the drunk guy outside. That’s sacrilegious. That’s the Marriage at Cana.

I am certainly not saying that Jesus isn’t holy and uniquely worthy of our absolute respect and devotion. In fact, I’m trying to say that Jesus is uniquely worthy of our absolute respect and devotion. Not the traditions, rituals, catechisms, etc. If I, who spent the first two decades of my life in Christian circles, can be suddenly jolted and upset by Jesus, then clearly it’s not enough to passively inherit a nominal faith. A living faith will upset you from time to time. It’ll offend you. If we’re in relationship with a real person and not a figure of our imagination, every now and then they’ll be someone we didn’t want or expect them to be. Then we have a choice to either walk away, or be uncomfortable for a while.

I am learning to see Christ in the people I would otherwise despise. It’s upsetting and I’m glad it is. It tells me I’m going in the right direction.

God is pure. God is morally perfect. God is worthy of our recognition, not in part but completely. And if I’m really after God, I have to recognize that one time he became really really unpleasant in order to make the rest of us unpleasant people, including myself at times, more like him.

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Aaron — who looks a lot younger in the picture than he really is — describes himself as a bibliophile, language enthusiast, religion enthusiast, aspiring performer, and above all, a writer. This article appeared earlier this week at Vox Surrantis: The Voice of One Whispering. Used by permission.

Same Kind of Different as Me: An Illustration of the Hands and Feet of Christ

Based on the book of the same name which is based on a true story, Same Kind of Different as Me is the unlikely story of the intersection of two worlds between an international dealer in expensive fine art and a homeless man who spent much of his life working overtime as a slave. Ron Hall is living the good life that involves interacting with high society when his wife Deborah drags him to reluctantly serve at the Union Gospel Mission. The 2007 book from Thomas Nelson later gave way to a small group curriculum as it raises many issues.

I had only minimal familiarity with the book — I knew it had sold well in some areas, which can be hard for a biographical work even if it reads better than some fiction — when invited to see the movie which, as you read this, is at the end of its second week in North America.

My wife and I were quite impressed. She even paid it the ultimate compliment (for her) by saying something as we left the theater, “It wasn’t a Christian movie;” by which she meant there wasn’t an overt gospel message leading toward key characters getting saved at the end. Indeed, this is actually the ideal Christian movie, where things are shown instead of told, and where Christian values are being lived out, rather than simply taught. Truly this is the Christian film you view with that unchurched neighbor, coworker or relative.

But it takes more than just a great screenplay to make a great picture. The additional points would go for some very plausible casting — I felt like I already know Ron and Deborah — and some rather breathtaking scenery, not to mention the visual image of the place in the woods where the homeless of that community spend the night.

The movie raises the possibility of much discussion about the type of activity which truly helps the homeless and gives them dignity and how, at the end of the day, we’re not all that different.

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Thanks to Tim at Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. for the tix.

 

Wednesday Link List

You’re not really showing up at the church potluck (or pot-blessed) supper unless you’re showing up with a zippered casserole carrier inscribed with the verse, “Serve one another in love.”

Places to go; people to meet!

• It’s hard to begin a list like this without mentioning the events of last Friday, but if you missed it, Mars Hill Church in Seattle is breaking up and the organization will cease to exist as presently structured. Christianity Today had the story; we had the various social media reactions.
• A California Christian university is offering all-expenses-paid scholarships to human trafficking survivors. You can contribute to the cause.
• Seven reasons ex-church attenders gave for no longer attending worship services.
• At this very blog: Oh, no; here we go again. Another FCC wireless spectrum option would render even more cordless microphones and other sound equipment in churches absolutely useless. Can your church budget take the hit? 
• The law society in Trinity Western University’s home province has rejected their request for accreditation of their law school after previously approving it.
  
• The secret church leadership (and business leadership) weapon that nobody ever talks about.
• When you hear about institutions that started out as an extension of the Church and then slowly lost the plot, you realize why today we have to be careful that these organizations don’t suffer from mission drift.
• Dialing for Doctrine: At the same time some Roman Catholics are ditching the idea of purgatory, some non-Catholics could be persuaded to entertain it.
• The story of imprisoned U.S. pastor Saeed Abedini gets tougher now that his mother has left Iran. (This case is a regular prayer request at our house; you’re welcome to join us.)
• Ever heard someone say, ‘Calvinism is the gospel’? “To say that Calvinism is the Gospel implicitly indicts all those who do not accept this theology (which would include most Christians who have ever lived) as not accepting the true Gospel.” It’s important to keep things in perspective.
• Darryl Dash linked to this article on the weekend; I realized later it’s from 2013, but decided it was worth reading on the subject of Church Plantation (I just made that term up, but it works): Here are five types of churches you might be planting and because this was written by a pastor, they all start with the letter ‘R.’
• Veteran youth ministry guru Mark Oestreicher on getting teens to read the Bible outside of church events.
• Reverse church growth: Small church expert Karl Vaters gets personal and explains why his church is better with 200 people than it was with 400.
• Good works are now illegal in Florida. “One of police officers came over and said ‘Drop that plate right now,’ as if I was carrying a weapon,”
• Celebrating 20 years online, a look back at the original internet incarnation of Christianity Today, the AOL forum Christianity Online.
• Authenticity: In ministry life you’re supposed to “be real.” But you’re also supposed to be perfect. “We’re broken. We’re human. And there’s no shame in admitting that we need God.”
• Podcast of the Week: Video gamers are a people group. A very large people group. 190 million Americans play at least an hour day. Hence the existence of Game Church. Openly reaching out to nerd culture. 23 min video or full transcript available.
• Agree or not? On a book for parents of same-sex-attracted teens: “…[T]he booklet does not seem to make a distinction between temptation and action itself. Based on some of its language, it seems to view the issue of inclination (which may or may not be welcomed by the one dealing with it) as an act of rebellion itself. But the reality may be more complicated than this.”
• For people who suffer with food allergies, churches that offer gluten-free communion elements allow them to experience “the fullness of the sacrament.” But it’s got to be done correctly.
• Finding a version of the first part of this that wasn’t NSFW, as in not safe to be clicked on at work, in most Christian homes and especially the church office wasn’t easy. I think it’s rather significant that at the same moment a page at Huffington Post beckoned me to read about what Miley Cyrus did (I found a less risqué page), the same website offered me a look at what Malala Yousafzai did. The latter’s $50,000 donation was, like The Widow’s Mite, worth far more than the former’s $500,000 one; and Malala’s attire was much more respectable.
• Another week, another movie to tell you about. Unbroken is based on the bestselling book on the life of Louie Zamperini, World War II survivor and scheduled to open on Christmas Day. The writer of this article is concerned that final editing may downplay the role that Christian faith played in Zamperini’s life…
• …and here’s a film curiosity, the movie Little Hope Was Arson, “based on the 2010 story of 10 East Texas churches set on fire in one month, leading to the region’s largest manhunt in history.” It opens later this month.
• Jamie the Very Worst was actually the very best podcast guest. (52 great minutes.)
  
• People aren’t so much hurt by the church as they’re hurt by a church.
• Online tool, clever book promotion, or both? “The Culture Test is a FREE assessment tool for learning your primary culture type – guilt, shame, or fear. You’ve learned your personality type, now learn your culture type in just 5 minutes! Understand global cultures, so you can anticipate the cultural collision.”
• What is Prayer? Is it (a) opening yourself to God in the things that matter most to you, (b) when you’re at the end of you, or (c) your best focused on someone else’s? If those don’t sound like the definitions you learned in Sunday School, that’s because these are Rob Bell’s.
• If he lived today, would Jesus have accountability software on his computer? Before you answer too quickly, consider the dynamics of temptation.
• It took just one complaint to get a piece of Noah’s Ark themed play equipment removed from a New Jersey playground.
• Jesus Junk: Don’t let your Christian paraphernalia do your witnessing for you.
• Not science fiction: An ambulance might take ten minutes to arrive. An ambulance drone gets there in 60 seconds.
• HuffPo does an exhaustive story and interview with “Christian rock star” Vicky Beeching.
• This little conference in Canada’s capital city ought to be a model for similar endeavors elsewhere. Only $29.50 for students; check out Dig and Delve.

We end today where we started last week; another movie parody poster from the Orange curriculum. Click the image for details.

Wednesday Link List

Post something amazing online and you could find yourself here next week! Click anything below and you end up at PARSE, the blog of Leadership Journal, a division of Christianity Today; from there, click the story you want to read.

• Taping has begun for The Rob Bell Show to air on OWN, Oprah’s network. There’s one a week today (5/14) but audience members must make a six hour commitment (and provide a picture of themselves; no kidding!)
• From home-schooled kid to co-director of Moms’ Night Out, a director’s take on the movie opening just in time for Mother’s Day weekend.
• Essay of the Week: Perhaps we’ve put the church growth/megachurch model on a pedestal when the model we should be idolizing is much smaller communities.
• When the seminar from a featured speaker at a UK spring festival draws less than 100 people, does that say something about his name recognition or churches not prioritizing outreach?
• “Let’s give the Lord a clap offering” is the latest phrase under the microscope at Dictionary of Christianese.
• HarperCollins Christian Publishing group will now include Olive Tree, a Bible software app that’s probably on your phone right now.
• No matter how much energy the band generates and no matter how great the precision of the flashing lights, some megachurch Evangelicals find their way back to the hymnbook.
• With many church activities being ‘a young man’s game,’ what does leadership look like when you enter your mature years?
• Cornerstone Television in Pennsylvania has been doing some cool things for 35 years now. (His Place is approaching 200 episodes.) Their latest new show is Sister 2 Sister.
• A young teen, Molly Kate Kestner finds out what happens if you don’t strive to be a star. (Now closing in on 4,000,000 views!)
• The opener to this one had me hooked: “In Catholic circles, the joke goes that if you want to quote from the Bible, find a good Protestant to help you.”
• Publisher’s Weekly interviews theologian Miroslav Volf.
• Modern Hymn of the Week: Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery. (Thanks, Zach!)
• Pastors and Depression: A quick list of the top ten triggers.
• Barnabas Piper doesn’t think people should write about writing. Nicholas McDonald disagrees.
• Pope Francis joins Catholic scholarship in espousing an economic view that is neither Capitalism nor Communism, but rather ‘Distributism.’
• Four Blood Moons sold enough copies to land on Tim Challies’ radar. Don’t be expecting a positive review.
• Is China really declaring war on megachurches or was this bulldozing truly just an over-the-top response to a building code issue?
• The issue that won’t go away: The Voice Bible blog with more on its translation choice for God’s name.
• Social media continually proves itself to be the wrong place for certain kinds of conversations.
• HarperCollins arranged to have a team of evangelical scholars write a rebuttal to Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God. The latter will release through Zondervan.
• The “Jesus had a wife” document turns out to be a forgery after all.
• The parents of an 18-year old TV star in the UK produced and acted in porn. Their son speaks out about how that genre is warping his generation’s view of sex.
• Author Emily Wierenga on why she doesn’t immediately launch Facebook first thing in the morning.
• Skye Jethani thinks your pastor’s sermon last Sunday might have run a bit long.
• The daughter of singer Ray Boltz on women’s reproductive rights.
• FOX-TV explores the life of Jesus at 13 — oh, those awkward teenage years — and other apocryphal stories in the new series Nazareth, now filming.
• An IVP author makes a solid case on video for meeting homelessness with affordable housing.
• All those pocket-sized Love Inspired inspirational fiction books have been bought by HarperCollins, along with the rest of Harlequin.
• Is a Christian lyric makeover considered parody? Either way, this is based on the popular song Royals by Lorde. (If you like the band Apologetix…)
• I love it when the visual layout of a blog matches the writer’s goal. (And check out the Sidewalk Prophets song posted on March 3rd.)
• …time to get back to work reviewing the curriculum that goes with AHA by Kyle Idleman, clearly the best yet from City on a Hill productions.

That’s it for this week. Between now and next Wednesday, join me at Thinking Out Loud, Christianity 201 and on Twitter. 

Congratulations to Phil Vischer, Skye Jethani and Christian Taylor on Episode 100 of the Phil Vischer Podcast! Click the image, sent in by listener Kyle Frisch to listen/watch.

Songs with substance: Enduring worship

If you check the right hand margin over at Christianity 201, you’ll see that all of the various music resources that have appeared there are listed and linked alphabetically. Take a moment to discover — or re-discover — some worship songs and modern hymns from different genres.

Wednesday Link List

Monday was Thanksgiving Day in Canada, and we were away, so the list is slightly smaller. Remember to have your submissions in by 8 PM EST Monday night.

• A friend from this blog’s past, Jim Lehmer, had an interesting item about a unique concept, a U.S. Election Day Communion Service.
• Speaking of politics, on Sunday, over 1,200 American pastors deliberately violated a law forbidding them to address political issues from the pulpit.
  
• From Saskatoon, Canada; the Faith Alive Band, a church worship band, has been getting a lot of buzz for its song Open The Floodgates, but everybody will refer to the song as Let It Rain Down. 
• Two great posts from a forward-thinking Salvation Army officer who lives in my part of the world and is back to blogging: First, witnessing a witnessing at Starbucks (that’s not a typo)…
• … And second, some info about The Dignity Project, the Salvation Army’s response to human trafficking.
  
• New to my personal blog bookmarks is Bob Hostetler’s Prayer Blog in which each post is a prayer culled from a number of eclectic sources — like this one — something he’s been doing since 2005. 
• I’ve mentioned Skye Jethani in reference to the Phil Vischer podcast, but here’s a couple of short videos of Skye teaching, the first of which I was actually the first to view.
• Speaking of SJ, on his other web interest, Out of Ur, we find Ravi Zacharias kicking off a very similar series about defining the gospel.
  
• Author and pastor Timothy Keller’s newest title releases in a month, this time around Every Good Endeavor is a business/leadership book for young professionals. 
• In the meantime, here’s a small — 48  pages; under $5 — Keller book you might have missed. The for The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness link is to a British website, but the book is available to stores in the U.S. through STL.
• Over 32,000 gathered in Wembley Stadium for last month’s UK National Day of Prayer.
• Getting hit by a bus is not usually a good thing, right? Here’s an encouraging story of healing and forgiveness.
• Darrell Creswell tells the story of a brief encounter with a homeless man at a traffic light; a situation that now occurs regularly in North American cities.
• If you ever feel your life is up and down like a yo-yo; here’s someone who can empathize.
  
• Lee Younger has a pretty good definition for young people of who it is you want to marry.
  
• A mention of the Music Box movie here recently got me looking for more by the Sensational Nightingales. Turn up your speakers and enjoy Every Promise in the Book is Mine. We is having church!
  

If you blog on blogspot, you should know that your blog address here in Canada automatically redirects to a .ca ending instead of .com and manually changing links to your blog is somewhat time consuming! We’re just assuming it flips back for our U.S. readers.

Homeless Teens: Life on the Street

I stood beside her coffin.  She looked she was sleeping.  I suppressed the urge to reach out and touch her.  I wanted to talk to her just once more. But she was dead — found in a construction site, in suspicious circumstances, of unknown causes.  She was poor; she was aboriginal; she was a street kid; there would be no further police investigation. I looked at her young face and remember the times we had share, times when I had hugged her, telling her I loved her.  She had come from a troubled and violent home.  Incest was a way of life for her.  Three months ago, she had given birth to a baby girl. Once she came to Evergreen particularly distressed.  She cleared a table with a sweep of her arm and grabbed a pen.  Then, with deliberate strokes, she put her heart on paper:  a striking scene of two friends sitting together on a bench.  When she left, she smiled and said, ‘This is the best time I’ve had in a long time.’ She had come to Evergreen the day she died.  Now she was gone forever. How very hard and short life is for some; how essential is the need to minister the Kingdom of God every moment, because that moment could be the last. I looked at her once more and through my tears, I said, ‘Good-bye.’ She was only 14 years old. ~from Prayer for the City, a quarterly publication of Yonge Street Mission and the Evergreen Centre in downtown Toronto, Canada.   Pray for the young people at Evergreen for whom life is hard and sometimes very short.  To learn more about YSM, click here.

Putting a Face on the Grace of God

First thing this morning, I got an e-mail from Richard. Apparently he reads this blog, and thought I would be interested in something on his. Rick has known he is HIV-positive for seventeen years now. He’s just started blogging some very candid, and very well-written stories of his life.

The February 23rd post is entitled Old Time Religion With a Twist. In his e-mail he said he’s “not a mainstream Christian” — hey Rick, a lot of people who read this are in that category — but thought it would suit our readers. I definitely agree.

In it he describes a time when he was staying at a particular shelter that obviously touched his life in a special way. He describes the minister who founded the shelter:

“… He was a small, short fellow, but he always had a sweet smile on his face. His face looked like it was always in direct contact with God. He beamed and there was a radiance around him that lit up the room when he entered. He was a quiet man and I didn’t really hear him speak often. But I’ll always remember his face and the way he seemed to glow with a radiance I had never seen and to this day have never seen. …It wasn’t anything he said or did, it was purely the radiance about him.”

Rick, what you saw wasn’t that individual so much as you saw Jesus reflected in him. I wish that could be said of me, of all of us; but quite honestly, sometimes we fail to meet that standard; or by the time we’ve got it figured out what God wants us to be, it’s time to check out of this chapter of life and into the next one.

Your story reminded me of a girl I met years ago who was a former winner in the Miss Toronto contest. She got all the perks of winning that, including a new car, but realized the only time she had ever been happy was when she was a child attending a Christian summer camp. She got in her car and drove to where she thought the camp was, and she knew she was close, but never actually found the camp property. She shut off her engine in that place, and asked God to restore to her the closeness she had felt to Him in those days. (And He did, which is how I heard the story.) She recommitted her life to living as a Christ follower.

So many people, maybe even some reading this blog, have had a special moment where they felt ‘connection’ with Jesus Christ. But the busyness of life takes us away from what the church calls a ‘communion’ we are supposed to experience on a daily basis.

There is an inner longing to return to that place. You hear it in songs:

“We are stardust, we are golden; and we’re caught in the devil’s bargain; and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

For all my readers, I hope you’ll read Rick’s article, and all his blog — here’s the link again — and you’ll pray for him and try to be to others what the people at that shelter in El Paso, Texas were to him.

To Rick, thanks for entrusting your story to me. Today’s the one year anniversary of this blog, and you’ve just reminded me of the good that come when we meet online. The peace of Christ that you experienced at that time is available to you again today. Immerse yourself in what Jesus said and did in the Gospels and allow those stories to come alive right where you are. Determine to live in the truth they present. Then, reach out to Jesus in prayer and ask him to fill you with His Spirit so that you can experience that same love, and radiate that same joy to others. “As freely as you have received, now freely give.”