America the beautiful. And tis true as I can testify to with authority after completing a 6800 mile trip to the West Coast from the East Coast and back again. America is indeed beautiful. But for someone like me who has lived much of the last 14 years in post-socialist nirvana, better known as Russia and the Balkans, beauty, while breathtaking, was not the most profound discovery of my transcontinental motorcycle trip. Freedom was.
Freedom to travel so far, unmolested, without documents, without police interference, with no border guards, with no customs officers, with the freedom to stop wherever I wanted whenever I wanted and pretty much do whatever I wanted . . . was . . . amazing.
Few people in the wide wide world experience such freedom of travel, thought and action. While American citizens who never leave their zip codes probably would not notice, nor appreciate this phenomena nearly as much as I did, they should. Freedom should never be taken lightly.
There are other freedoms I pondered while on my motorcycle for days and days . . . the heaviest of these is the end of my professional holy man days. I am more and more convinced that our evangelical system of church is less and less biblical. Professional Christians, known as clergy in many circles, are those people who stand in for God. We serve His sacraments, we lead His hymns and songs, we pray His prayers, we teach His book . . . we also take much of His abuse and almost all of His adulation.
Professional Christians maintain the system that makes weekly gatherings mandatory for those who wish to be in good standing with Him. We professional Christians also dictate that you, the Christian professionals, must give your money to this system, that you must volunteer your time to this system, that you must serve on committees that preserve this system, that we must do everything possible to maintain and perpetuate this system . . . and on and I could go, but won’t.
There just seems to be little left of the two great commandments of Scripture, in the system (we all this church). There is little human, caring, loving texture left in the system. I think God wants to set us free. Free to be human, free from rules of the system (think modern contemporary pharisees here) free to love and care for humans in human ways. I may still work in the system occasionally and I may still perform some of actions of clergy. But inside the garden of my heart, and in the manner I earn my living, my professional holy man days are numbered. As my friend Mark said to me not too long ago, I can be a Christian professional, but I can’t be a profession Christian any longer.
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God's greatest expression of love to us was becoming fully human Himself. The Word became flesh-our only mandate. I've been so privileged to see this truth lived out in the worst situations. It's God when jail cells become places of worship, holy communion is a mother serving her broken child day after day, hospice patients are served by a former addict and the homeless find community in suburbia (ok, well, in America...lol). His precious treasure in jars of clay-and understanding this, we are free to love without title or trappings.
I've been somewhat fed up with church and even with evangelical faith as it is commonly expressed — for a number of years.
I've been telling people lately that I'm a follower of Jesus Christ but not a very good Christian.
It seems to me that the real movement of grace in this world is not confined to any religion. Not all Christians are walking in grace; not all people walking in grace are Christians.
The grace of God in bigger and more complicated than we can imagine. And it is altogether missing from some Christian organizations. Or perhaps operating within those organizations, as Sue described in her response, but not identified at all with the political structures themselves.
Margaret Chow wrote, "Christians aren’t worthy of using the name because there's nothing about them that’s anything like Christ. If Jesus came back He would tell them ‘That’s not what I meant!'"
And, with great sincerity, I have been trying to get this right — trying to come to the place where I finally have confidence that Jesus Christ could look over my shoulder and, at least on some occasions, tell me, "Now that's what I meant."
I have no idea to what extent I'm succeeding with my intention.
...just my ideas — probably not profound and possibly not even right.
I do understand being fed up, but lately I have also come to understand that I'm too quick to judge people in the church. The only thing I can do is be obedient to the Lord. I can't be a "good Christian" either, because in and of myself I'm not good. No one is. Christ is good, and hopefully I'm a Christian in the true sense of the word, a little Christ, a copy of the original, not a flesh-driven impersonation. And the beauty of God's love and grace is that it permeates the world. Still, those of us given an invitation to be a disciple have a great responsibility.
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