Sunday School and the Flannel Board Jesus

When I was a kid I liked Sunday school. Sunday school was about big red cardboard bricks I could build a fort out of and train sets with wooden train tracks I could snap together...and sometimes a flannel board Jesus. I liked Sunday school cause it was mostly about me...it was easy. Life in the Church as an adult is often not like that. There are no building blocks and although Jesus stops being a flannel image people still try to make Him do what they want.

I was talking with my friend Neil today. We met at Couple Cups and I started venting. I've been a little bit sick, and tired, and working weird hours for a few weeks so that maybe had something to do with it, but we started talking about Church. He asked me how I was doing in finding one. I started telling Him about some of the good things, small groups, friends, food, jumping into some tough stuff that I need to talk about...It's been frustrating too though. I'm not always understood and sometimes it's hard to jump in past a clicky groups exterior circle. But then something else came up. I think it had been ruminating for a few days.

Some of the frustration has come from the Christians online culture..the great impersonal venting fields of Facebook and blogging hubs. It seems like it's so easy to hate on the Church.

I think it's kind of trendy to be jaded...to name all the faults while feeling righteous enough to point the finger. These are apparently the victims of the nameless other...the large steepled, white suited, shadowy other that supports big business in Washington and doesn't care about the poor.

Somewhere along the line I feel cynicism has became a way of life for many Americans...many in the church as well. I am tired of reading blogs that say “15 reasons I left the Church” or “Why I love Jesus and not Evangelicals.” Everyone seems to have a reason why “Evangelical” and “Fundamentalism” are curse words.

No one ever stops to examine what a liberal fundamentalist would look like...

…or maybe it's to in vogue to do so.

Don't get me wrong. I think the church has issues. They have large and long lasting issues sewn into the fabric of it's buildings and patrons. But it seems people's responses have become more to cut ones self off from the issues... to exude oneself from the church like a hand from a wound. It seems more reasonable to blame, point the finger, and exit in dramatic fashion all the while blogging about how self-righteous the church is, not being able to see their own hypocrisy. What the hand does not realize...is if the wound bleeds, the hand will still experience the body's death.

It is stylish to be other, to be the different view point, to be able to see “it all” from that one un-examined angle. That I suppose could even be said about this writing...but...I am not blaming the cynic Christian, the one who once had hurts and fears that were exacerbated by the church, those who were made afraid to ask questions or to talk about struggles of theirs for fear of feeling like the “other”...No, for many of them they waited so long it boiled right out of them and all that was stewing internally poured out on their features, wrinkling up their noses and lining their eyes in piercing accusation. The last time they darkened a sanctuary door, was when it all broke loose...or maybe worse...it was when their indifference or fear or you name it, died... a quiet walk from the building was all they had left, each step the sound of the nail entering hopes coffin and the slow rot of bitterness starting it's pungent aroma.

People seem to have found their solution in blaming the church and ultimately, far to often, changing Jesus. They say the church is messed up, a bunch of hypocrites,...and they would be right....but that is sort of the point. We are all those things....the solution, however isn't to change Jesus...Jesus is the one right thing in all of Christianity. He is the point.

People assume that if the church messed up in presenting the gospel, the problem must lie with Jesus. It becomes their personal responsibility to reinterpret Him. To take the Bible and cut and splice until there is something more palatable, something more tame and nice that we can all agree on....

My friend sent me a message the other day in regard to some thoughts he was having. He said:

The recent "Jesus said to love EVERYONE. Period." statements going around facebook regarding homosexuality have been particularly frustrating...These statements are against people who disagree with homosexuality as a practice assuming that those who oppose homosexuality DON'T LOVE homosexuals. Jesus certainly said to love everyone (and I will NEVER oppose that) but I believe part of his reasoning was to turn people from their sinful temptations by showing them the love of God holds something better for them.

Unfortunately, everyone who is posting these "Jesus said to love EVERYONE" statements couldn't care less about the Bible or Jesus...they simply want to tell Christians that they are being spiteful hypocrites.

Now that is just one issue..one among many that we could address...and this isn't always being posted by Christians by any means...but it's an issue because of what it does to the person of Jesus.

I suppose the point is though, to just say "Jesus Loves" in a way that disregards sin is not to strengthen Jesus' Love, it is to make it not love at all. It is to make it a senile jovial approval that disregards health, need, or purpose. It is to degrade the word love to "approval of whatever the crowd feels acceptable."

To say "Jesus Loves Period" is to assume that those who do not approve of a practice do not or cannot love. It is really a subtle way of backhanding those who disagree and actually furthering non-love in it's action.

I think there are good answers to most of the questions people have, hearty, robust answers that are more than one liners fed to the masses, deep intellectual and formidable answers...but we don't teach them well. The church is a mile wide and an inch deep – as the saying goes. It is getting better but it takes a long time to right decades of wrong teaching and practice...and even in our righting it all...I'm sure we will turn it's course in another direction it ought not go...thus is the nature of humanity when determining it's own will.

But since we do not find out those answers...and there doesn't seem someone close willing to answer our questions most of us make up answers for ourselves. We say things like... “Well, to me Jesus seems....” or “I think Jesus would do this in this situation”....then this morphs into “Well, I don't think Jesus would do that because...” and finally “I think Jesus is really something more like ...” what we are really saying is, I want to pick and choose what I believe true of Jesus. I am really saying nothing more than "I believe in deity...and if I were Him....this is the way he would be."

God Help us all.

-Jordan