The confidence, the self-assurance, the certainty, the direction, the decision-making, the money, the intelligence… and to make things ten times worse, they’re so like-able.
They’re in my space. I have no room to breathe around them. I’m pushed outside. When I go into a church with its “act together” I can’t get back out that door quick enough… the false certainties, the formulas for salvation, the moral standards, the superiority. It’s so not me. I’m a broken person in so many ways and I’m not looking to cover up my condition with success or religion. I want honesty. It’s so much easier to listen to someone who is also struggling – the wounded healer. I don’t want answers so much as grace. God sent ugly, broken, out-of-place people to speak the words that needed to be spoken. Our human inclination is to focus on the messenger more than the message, so God often eliminated this distraction and people howled with indignation, saying, “How can this woman/child/incompetent person be speaking for God?” Yet it’s their words that stand the test of time because their words are God’s words. We should follow the Muslim tradition and not allow the romantic, stylized, treacle we see in fanciful pictures of Jesus while ignoring his fiercely challenging words to love our enemies. I want a church with a leaky roof and people who have histories.
And I don’t really hate anybody.
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