As I recover a bit from a grueling five months, I find myself being drawn back into those things that stir my passions.
The ideas below the surface of things, and the history and movement of theology, and tearing away the barnacles that evangelicals have attached to the Bible.
It is what I love.
Every time I watch a Reformed or Presbyterian pastor, or a mega-church leader, or a money grubbing Pentecostal prosperity preacher, it causes me pain. I am reminded of the words of Jesus,
“… you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.”
The experts of religion spend their time arguing over who is in and who is out. They miss the feast, because they are so concerned about the guest list.
They can’t enjoy the beauty and the taste and the smell of the new wine because someone they despise might be sitting at the table.
They build barriers against the gay man, the trans woman, the woman preacher, the one who baptizes wrong, or believes the wrong things about the flood or creation or abortion or gay rights or heaven or hell or women or men or on and on and on…
They’ve become the experts on everything except one thing. How to rest. How to just sit and enjoy the feast.
How to leave the questions about who is in and who is out in the hands of God and just learn to love their neighbor so fiercely you feel it in your guts (bowels of mercy – is how the old King James puts it. Weird huh?).
As Jesus said, you fight so fiercely about who belongs and who doesn’t belong that you miss the feast completely.
You wouldn’t even want to be in the kingdom of God because the wrong sort of person might be there.
You wouldn’t want to sit at the feast because someone might drink wine. Or hold hands with the wrong person.
And pretty soon it gets to the point when you can’t even tell the difference between beauty and filth. You can’t even see the kingdom of God, and you inexplicably mistook it for an orange foul-mouthed cretin, an over the hill 80s movie villain, a rapist, a scoffer, a contemptuous fool.
And you looked at the idiot and said, “He’s our guy”. Best president we ever had.
And all he had to do was promise a wall to keep the wrong sort of people from being happy and blessed and prosperous and you shouted Hallelujah!
Because he tapped into your religion. The religion of power and insider knowledge, and control and domination, and circling the wagons to keep the riffraff out…
And you were sent invitation after invitation. Come. Sit. Eat. Rest.
Here is the rest you have been looking for. Here is the peace you have been seeking.
But you turned into an angry pile of rage at the thought that the OTHERS were invited to rest as well. And they went in ahead of you.
You preferred to sit with the rapists and the pedophiles and the murderers and the abusers and the grifters because they spoke your language.
“We are entitled to it and you are not. You are not us. You deserve pain and isolation and death even if I have to take it too.”
And you didn’t even see the irony.
But here is the amazing thing – even now it isn’t too late.
Anyone who comes is invited to come.
But yes, there will be “undeserving” people there. There will be people who wear funny clothes and speak funny languages and love the wrong sorts of people and do things that you think are wrong…
They will still be there. So unless you throw down your hate and your weapons you won’t ever come. You’ll be left outside, not because God closed the gate, but because you would rather starve than sit with a “sinner”
That’s sad.
And this is my ramble for the day. This is why white evangelicals doubled down on Trump when every single other demographic turned away from the ugly.
White evangelicals like the ugly, because the god they serve is ugly.
