"Your love doesn't look like love": Critics of the Church speak out
August 31, 2014 | Anita Retzlaff
Grace and peace to you from God the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ. As I greet you this morning in the name of Jesus and in a similar manner to that of the Apostle Paul it strikes me that we are facing as great a peril today as did the early Christians who received this greeting some 2000 years ago. We all know people who confide in us that they believe in God and have faith, that they are spiritual, but have no interest in joining us in worship on Sunday mornings or being a part of the work of the Church. The peril we face is not so much that these individuals aren't sitting beside us on a hard wooden bench this morning but that somehow we have not communicated the love of Christ in such a way that these friends, children and family members are drawn to a community of faith. In Paul's day the church faced a similar challenge as they opened their communities to the love of Christ and were faced by significant political and religious opposition.
Of course, it is not all our fault that people are leaving the church today or that others have no interest in joining. Our social climate has been radically altered in the last generations and there are many societal forces that actually work against the type of community-building that we seek to accomplish here in the name of Christ. But I do want to address the ways in which it is our fault that folks are not in love with the church. I do so not to browbeat us or make us feel rotten but rather, quite the opposite, to encourage us to act, to give us hope, to reconsider our ways, the ways of the Church that must become more flexible and responsive. There is always good news to be found within the body of Christ and among those who seek to be faithful.
I begin with a blog sent to me by a friend. It is written by John Pavlovitz, a young man probably in his late 30s or early 40s who was in ministry for 17 years describing himself as a father of 2 and a husband of 1. "Church," he writes, "here's why people are leaving you." (https://johnpavlovitz.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/walkingaway.jpg) Using his words I will briefly attempt to recapture the five ways in which he thinks that the Church is the problem and why it is responsible for the mass exodus of many.
- "Your Sunday productions have worn thin. The stage, and the lights, and the video screens, have all just become white noise to those really seeking to encounter God... We can be entertained anywhere. Until you can give us something more than a Christian-themed performance piece; something that allows us space and breath and conversation and relationship, many of us are going to sleep-in and stay away.
- You speak in a foreign tongue. Church, you talk and talk and talk, but you do so using a dead language...all the religious buzzwords that used to work 20 years ago, no longer do....People don't need to be dazzled with big, churchy words and about eschatalogical frameworks and theological systems. Talk to them plainly about love, and joy, and forgiveness, and death, and peace, and God, and they'll be all ears.
- Your vision can't see past your building....most of your time, money, and energy seems to be about luring people to where YOU are, instead of reaching people where they ALREADY are. Rather than simply stepping out into the neighbourhoods around you and partnering with the amazing things ALREADY happening, and the beautiful stuff God is ALREADY doing, you seem content to franchise out your particular brand of Jesus-stuff, and wait for the sinful world to beat down your door. Your greatest mission field is just a few miles, (or a few feet) off your campus and you don't even realize it. You wanna reach the people you are missing? Leave the building.
- You choose lousy battles. We know you like to fight, Church. That's obvious. When you want to, you can go to war with the best of them. The problem is, your battles are too darn small....Every day we see a world suffocated by poverty, and racism, and violence, and bigotry, and hunger; and in the face of THAT stuff, you get awfully, frighteningly quiet. We wish you were as courageous in THOSE fights, because then we'd feel like coming alongside you; then we'd feel like going to war with you. Church, we need you to stop being warmongers with the trivial, and pacifists in the face of the terrible.
- Your love doesn't look like love. Love seems to be a pretty big deal to you, but we're not getting that where the rubber meets the road. In fact, more and more, your brand of love seems incredibly selective and decidedly narrow; filtering out all the spiritual riff-raff, which sadly includes too many of us....We see a Jesus in the Bible, who hung out with lowlifes and prostitutes and outcasts, and loved them right there, but that doesn't seem to be your cup of tea...From what we know about Jesus, we think he looks like love. The unfortunate thing is, you don't look much like him."
That is a hard-hitting indictment of the Church, of North American Christianity, of us. I will personally accept some of it but not all of it. And I chose the scripture text for this morning because I think it warns us of the same thing: "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged." Some of us have read this passage so many times that we don't recognize it as a similar critique to the one we just heard. In Eugene Peterson's words the text comes alive in a new way: "Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults--unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbour's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbour." (Matthew 7:1-5; Eugene Peterson, The Message)
Lest you begin to feel that all is lost let me reassure you that the Spirit of God blows upon the face of her Church and in many ways and through many faithful, the good news of God’s love is spreading and welcomed. I want to show you the truth of this, from our own young people in the Mennonite Church. We have prepared to view a short YouTube video compiled in Ontario articulating the ways in which the church is valued by our Mennonite youth and ways in which, they say, it could become more authentic. Alina Balzer-Peters, daughter of Geraldine and Gordon is one of the young people in this video. Thanks to Edna and Don Froese for making it possible to watch this 5 minute bit of inspiration.
VIDEO
From the voices of the young people who remain involved in the Mennonite Church we hear that same call to be authentic to Jesus’ way. These are reminders for us to set aside our judgmental inclinations and connect on a very basic level with all people. Radical welcome, unconditional acceptance, working together and deepening relationships reflect the desires of these young people and mirror the call of Jesus to those who choose to follow him. If we, the Church, are bewildered and confused about why formal religion is under fire we need look no further than the challenge put before us in this video to see the suggestions given and the ways in which we can work to build authentic Christian community. We are not helpless and the call of Jesus in the world is not hopeless. We can quit moaning and get moving!
I will add one further challenge for us. This came to my attention in a book that I read this summer: “Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious’ by Linda Mercadante. I had suggested earlier that there are many among us and in our circles of work and friendship who say that they are spiritual but not religious. This is a growing reality and it is a fact that many people watching from the sidelines of religion are disappointed in the ways that religious communities behave. The “spiritual but not religious” which by the way encompasses all age groups though the younger generations are more likely to identify in this way: these tend to avoid group commitment. In general they equate religion with an immovable, rigid, external structure and the spiritual as that place of deep personal experience. So, there are many in our midst looking for an authentic and deeper spiritual connection but are not expecting to find it within our religious institutions.
And here the author explains why many of these “spiritual but not religious” folk have no desire to be part of the organized Christian church. She lists 6 positions that they are inclined to reject in all religions:
- an exclusivism that rejects all religions but one’s own;
- a wrathful and/or interventionist God;
- a static and permanent afterlife of glorious heaven and tortuous hell;
- an oppressively authoritarian religious tradition;
- a non-experiential repressive religious community; and
- a view of humans as “born bad.”
(Linda Mercadante, Belief without Borders: Inside the minds of the Spiritual but not Religious, 2014, p. 230)
I would have to say that I would agree with this position. I do not believe in a vengeful God who makes sport of human suffering, condemns most of humanity to hell and a church that is authoritarian, repressive and exclusive. I wouldn’t join either. So somewhere we have miscommunicated what we are about as Christians. As was suggested earlier, our fights within the church over women in leadership, divorce, our current explosive divisions over issues of sexuality have alienated many on the sidelines. This is a call for us to be careful about what we say in the name of Jesus, how we treat others whom we see as different from ourselves and that we trust God to be the ultimate judge of those things which we do not understand.
How do we make sure that our love really looks like love? Do not judge. Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. Do to others as you would have them do to you. At the conclusion of the book Mercadante says this: “Only a church that is intelligently faithful, ecumenical, and inter-religious stands a chance of convincing SBNRs that the church is truly forward-thinking, serious about spirituality, and an agent of change.” (p. 256) And you know what else? She holds up the Sermon on the Mount as a way forward. Our text for this morning is part of the Sermon on the Mount. We are well equipped to love and to serve. Let’s take seriously the critique being offered but let us not lose hope. May it be that indeed our love, in the name of Jesus, is authentic love – the real thing. AMEN
