A Blessing Machine

In my last post, I mentioned the idea that truth is truth regardless of who says it and why, an idea which is quite powerful and carries some significant implications for how I approach the world. This relates quite strongly to another characteristic of truth which I rediscovered tonight: when you stumble upon truth, whether by design or by accident, it will punch you in the face. By this I mean that when you happen upon truth, you won't be able to miss it or ignore it. Truth has this funny habit of making itself known.

One of the topics I've written on again and again in this space is my consistent frustration with what the word Christianity means in the 21st Century, and with what church has become in this era. I'm sure you've read and heard and witnessed many of the same things that I have...churches condemning the entirety of the gay community in a debate over what the word marriage means, religious leaders acting as though Jesus wants us to vote for one political party over another, and so on. I don't want to bore you with examples. Available by request, I'll say.

A Religion for Losers

I don't often write in this space about God or my faith, at least in a personal way. Not because I am ashamed of it or it doesn't exist, though you might not be able to tell from my recurring criticisms of religion and church and so on. Rather, I choose not to write about the personal aspects of my faith because I know there are many other voices with more and better things to say about who God is and what it means to follow Jesus. That isn't what I'm here to do. I don't want to muddle the conversation by entering it as if I were some kind of expert, when admittedly I am not. All that being said, something came up at my church on Sunday which I feel the need to dive into a little bit.

Thank You, Pat Robertson...

...for once again validating everything I ever said about you.



How can Christians be taken seriously by the world if the people who claim to speak for us are allowed to spout hateful, ignorant rhetoric over and over again? There are so many problems in this world, so many problems that we have the power to effect and change. And in case you were wondering, gays and lesbians aren't the problem. Liberals aren't the problem. People on welfare aren't the problem. Unfortunately, if you ask Pat Robertson and those who think like him, you will be told that gays and liberals and so on are the problem. I just can't figure out how that fits in with the message of love Jesus spent his time on Earth preaching and teaching. The sooner the Christian community can shed Mr. Robertson as an influential voice, the better.

And so on...

Gov. Robert Bentley: Seriously?

Apologies for following up one post with another similar post, but the newly elected governor of Alabama leaves me no choice.

If the governor wants to get into theology, perhaps he should recognize that God is the father of all - Christian or not. To use the prodigal son example, we are all God's children; many have simply strayed from the Father. Non-belief in Jesus doesn't change who your father is...it just prevents you from being an active part of the family.

Regardless of theology, politicians (of both sides) need to stop using inflammatory rhetoric with such regularity. There is no reason for Gov. Bentley take a shot at non-Christians in the way he did; how can an athiest or Muslim or whomever expect him to govern fairly and without bias if he views Christians as better than non-Christians? How do we know that view won't seep over into his policymaking, in a way such that non-Christians are deprived of rights or attacked by his government? You might say that I'm simply looking at this situation as a slippery slope, and that none of this is worth worrying about. The problem is, such a me-versus-them mentality has permeated both our churches and our political offices, and division never brings reconciliation. It only brings suffering. And correct me if I am wrong, but we have had enough suffering lately for quite a while.

And so on...

Cindy Jacobs: Seriously?

Ohmygodyouhavegottobekiddingme.

Politics aside, these are the kinds of people who bug the everlivin' out of me. I should probably just stop, or else another Tucker Carlson-esque post might get written.

Helping Without Hurting, part 1

One of the consistent topics I wrote about this summer was my growing passion for battling poverty and the things that cause it in this world. However, the more I have sought answers, the bigger and more difficult to solve the problem appeares. Poverty is completely pervasive in this world. It is everywhere. It is huge. Thinking about taking it on makes me feel like Apollo Creed about to step in the ring with Ivan Drago. (If you don't know Rocky, click the link).

Yet, no matter how huge the problem is (and it is), I am dead set on looking for ways to solve it. Why? Because my heart was broken. As I become passionate about one thing or another (such as my skepticism towards church, disgust towards Christian politics, etc.), I seek out ways to further my understanding of the subject. I have no illusions that my ideas are the best; rather, I choose seek out experts in their respective fields and hear what they have to say. After learning from people who know more than I do, I adjust my own ideas and beliefs and move forward from there.

If I am going to claim that I want to learn from experts, I need to back it up by doing so. There are some particular individuals whom I call friends who have a similar passion for social justice and helping society. Picking their brains has steered me toward a handful of books and experts from which to learn. These books include The End of Poverty by Sachs, When Helping Hurts by Corbett and Fikkert, among others.

Very recently I began reading the Corbett/Fikkert book (thank you Amazon) with a great deal of anticipation and excitement. One of the ideas I have struggled with in the last few months is the value (or lack thereof) of short term missions. It seems to me that the costs associated with providing a large group of high school or college students with travel (airfare), lodging, food and other things become extremely expensive, and in large part is wasted. Perhaps I should provide a fictional example to illustrate what I am talking about. Let's say that we have a youth group of, say, 20 high schoolers. This group wants to take a week long mission trip to, say, Mexico, and build a church (or school or orphanage or whatever). According to Expedia, a roundtrip flight from Cincinnati to Houston would cost roughly $200 per person. The people on this trip would have to eat, so there would be costs associated with that. $15 per day per person for food costs sounds appropriate. Day to day costs of transportation to and from the worksite (buses, etc.) might cost up to $100 per person for the week. And so on. In general, individual costs for a mission trip can get up to $1000, but for my purposes here we can benchmark it at $500 for each person on the trip. Not unreasonable at all.

Twenty kids at 500 bucks apiece adds up to ten grand. Ten thousand dollars. Imagine how much good could be done with $10,000 in an impoverished community in a second or third world country. Instead, we use that money to send wide-eyed students with no skills or experience into a situation where they are by and large useless except for basic manual labor. In my high school, these trips are happening with 200 kids, not just twenty. The money being spent is astronomical. Here is my alternative: pay contractors in the country to build the church/school/whatever. This creates jobs (both for specialists and for manual labor) in places where work is likely difficult to come by, and in doing so helps the local economy in addition to helping whatever specific group the building or whatnot was for. Or give the money to missionaries who live in the community and know best how it can be spent. Or use the money to plant a missionary. Et cetera.

This is the (very) basic idea behind my many thoughts on short term missions. I hate the idea of wasted resources, and it seems as though more could be done with the money we use to send kids (or whomever) on these trips. But Corbett and Fikkert take this to another level. To these men it appears that our well-intentioned missions work and charity to third world areas isn't just wasting resources, but it is actually hurting the communities there. I began reading their book with all this in mind, and encountered the following selection in the introduction:

"We write this book with a great deal of excitement about the renewed interest in helping low-income people that is so apparent among North American Christians. While materialism, self-centeredness, and complacency continue to plague all of us, nobody can deny the upswing in social concern among North American evangelicals in the past two decades. There is perhaps no better illustration of this trend than the exploding short-term mission movement, much of which has focused on ministering to the poor at home and abroad.

But our excitement about these developments is seriously tempered by two convictions. First, North American Christians are simply not doing enough. We are the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth. Period. Yet, most of us live as though there is nothing terribly wrong in the world. We attend our kids' soccer games, pursue our careers, and take beach vacations while 40 percent of the world's inhabitants struggle just to eat every day. And in our own backyards, the homeless, those residing in ghettos, and a wave of imigrants live in a world outside the economic and social mainstream of North America. We do not necessarily need to feel guilty about our wealth. But we do need to get up every morning with a deep sense that something is terribly wrong with the world and yearn and strive to do something about it. There is simply not enough yearning and striving going on.

Second, many observers, including Steve and I, believe that when North American Christians do attempt to alleviate poverty, the methods used often do considerable harm to both the materially poor and the materially non-poor. Our concern is not just that these methods are wasting human, spiritual, financial, and organizational resources but that these methods are actually exacerbating the very problems they are trying to solve."

The goal, then, becomes to discover methods that do not harm the people we are trying to help. The reason this post has a "part 1" at the end of the title is because I hope to relay what I learn as I go through the book. Maybe I won't learn anything and the book will turn out to be a complete waste of money. I hope that is not the case. We will see. But either way, I'm going to keep searching for ways that I can help solve this problem. Or maybe push/inspire/convince other people to solve the problem in ways I cannot. The only thing that is unacceptable is doing nothing.

And so on...

Living by the Book

Thanks to DS
To explain every facet of why I hate religion is going to take a long, long time. I have gotten my feet wet in that discussion a few times in this space, including my thoughts on Anne Rice leaving the church, Christian bookstores and how Gandhi viewed Christians, among other examples.

The sticking point in all these posts is common between them: people trying to act Christian rather than like Christ are creating problems rather than solutions, and doing it all in the name of a God who is likely ashamed of their actions (I would never presume to know exactly what the reactions of God are, but I am willing to lend an educated guess). The motives of churchy people trying to "be" Christian are likely good and real, consistent with what they think truth is. The problem is not the initial motives of Christians, but rather the way Jesus has been institutionalized, prepackaged and made into a formula and set of rules that must be upheld or else.

The title of this post - living by the book - comes from something a high school teacher of mine passed along during class my senior year. He said to us, "you can live by the book, but it's slavery." This simple statement is one of the most profound and important things I have learned thus far in life, but I do think it requires a measure of explanation before I continue.

Living by the book can have two distinct meanings in this context, one that I believe to be beneficial and one that I believe to be harmful. First, the beneficial way of approaching the phrase: as Christians we are called to live a lifestyle consistant with that of Jesus. This means treating people like Jesus did, loving people without conditions, judging no one and seeking to help everyone. If the Bible is taken as the Word of God, its words should be revered and its message followed. And without question, the message of the Bible and of Jesus is love. Love God, love your neighbor. In this sense, living by the book is the greatest thing we can do as people and as followers of Christ, and I believe that we are all called to do so. But I hesitate to call that "living by the book", so instead I will refer to this idea as following the message of Jesus.

Unfortunately, the second way the phrase can be taken is much less positive. Today, the phrase living by the book means following the rules, being a "good" person, or something to that extent. This is the sense in which my teacher meant the phrase, as I am sure you immediately understood upon reading his quote. Within the context of Christ followers, 'the book' can again refer to Scripture, but not in such a positive light. Rather than considering the message of Jesus (love), this way of approaching Scripture means turning the Bible into a rule book. A rule book that must be followed at all costs, as if God expects perfection from his imperfect creation. A rule book that allows us to judge people who are different than we are, one that we can tailor to cast ourselves in the best light. This is what I am referring to when I say "living by the book" from now on.

This second version of living by the book had a grip on my life for many, many years. Being raised in a Christian household, going to church every week and attending a Christian school meant that I was constantly surrounded by people telling me what I could and could not do within the context of making Jesus happy. I was constantly being shown (almost exclusively at school) that this Lamb of God was spending his every waking moment spying on me, hoping to catch me slip up. Hoping to see me fail. Perhaps not always explicitly, but it was certainly implied and pounded into my mind. I was raised to fear sin and sinners (and to ignore the fact that Christ followers are sinners just like everyone else). I was told that dancing is dangerous (it leads to sex...gasp), that drinking alcohol makes you a bad person, that Democrats are evil. I was molded into believing that once a person commits a "big" sin, I have to label them as whatever their sin was: druggie, alchie, slut, liberal, Catholic (yeah, I know, ridiculous, but no joke). I grew up in a context that made me a slave to the book. A slave to the rules. I was afraid to slip up: for fear of being labeled as one of those naughty sinners, for fear of Jesus seeing me and shouting "gotcha!", for fear of people losing respect for me. If I did slip up, the guilt train came hurtling into the station and ran me over every time. There was no escaping it. Turn on the television and you will find televangelists preaching fire and brimstone and fear. "God is out to get you unless you follow the rules." I believed that if I sinned, Jesus would disown me. That lie is something I have had a difficult time overcoming, and is something I struggle with to this day.

Thankfully, there are people like Brennan Manning who are determined to speak truth against the lie of living by the book. In his book The Ragamuffin Gospel, Manning wrote:

"Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace."

Grace means that the rules carry no weight any more. It means that there is no value in living by the book. The value comes from following the message of Jesus, from living a life focused on love rather than keeping score.

My teacher was spot on when he said that living by the book is slavery. No good comes from following the rules for the sake of the rules. Instead, it creates cynicism, sows dischord and pushes people away from the message of Jesus. I believe that living by the book and following the message of Jesus are two mutually exclusive things. If I am following the message of Jesus, I have no concern for whatever mistakes a person made in their past, no desire to judge or label them. Rather, my sole concern is to show them love. I am drawn to accept them for who they are and to approach them with no pretenses or hangups. In contrast, a person mired in living by the book will likely be so concerned with following the perceived rules themselves that they become covered in guilt from the times they make a mistake. And often they will begin watching to see if everyone else is following those rules as well. And if the people they watch are slipping up (or just ignoring the rules altogether), there is a more than small chance that judgment and contempt will soon follow - two things that have no place within the message of Jesus.

I refuse to be a slave to the book any longer. Consequences be damned means living my life free from fears and worries. If I make a mistake, so be it. I will clean that mess up when I come to it. The message and actions of Jesus mean that I do not need to fear failing or screwing up because he paid for my mistakes already. To live explicitly by the book is to deny the message of Jesus, the gospel of grace and love. Sure, many of the rules have merit. But to follow them for the sake of following them is unhealthy and (dare I say it) wrong. Instead, I choose to live my life focused on loving people. I have found that if I live my life focused on love first, I find myself following most of the "rules" anyway, without even thinking about it. Funny how that happens.

And so on...

Author Quits Christianity?

Author Anne Rice, whose works include "Interview with a Vampire", has decided that she is quitting Christianity; not quitting Christ, but quitting the church. I certainly cannot blame her, and it is quite interesting that CNN would pick up this story so quickly, but more on my thoughts later. Here are the barebones of the story, per CNN.

"[Rice], who wrote a book about her spirituality titled "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" in 2008, said Wednesday that she refuses to be "anti-gay", "anti-feminist", "anti-science" and "anti-Democrat".

Rice wrote, "For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else."

"My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," Rice wrote. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become."

I point this out not because there is anything more significant about Anne Rice than anyone else, but rather because it reflects a similar thought process that I have been finding my way through. Just as Anne experienced, my conscience will not allow me to be a rank and file "Christian": supporting all the popular causes, backing all of the religious-claiming candidates, perpetuating prejudice and judgment toward people who do not believe what I believe. Jesus did not judge or ridicule imperfect people. He loved them. Clearly going to church does not make you like Jesus, in the same way that sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken. I have instead chosen to distance myself from following the lead of mainstream, fundamentalist American Christianity.

I refuse to be a single issue voter.
I will not throw my lot in with a single political party.
I am unwilling to judge those who have different beliefs than mine.
My place is not to look down on 'sinners' or feign perfection.
I enjoy being around salt of the earth, honest, screwed up people.

Like Anne, I too am an outsider to much of the Christian community, but this is not something I am ashamed of or concerned with. My reaction to being an outsider is to seek a middle ground between myself and the ubiquitous entity that is known as 'church'. As I search for ways to love people and work for the good of humanity and remove judgment like Jesus did, I hope to see 'church' - and churchy people - do the same. But until that common ground is located I am going to try to follow Jesus, rather than follow his followers. I think Gandhi would understand, just as Anne Rice does.

And so on...

A Different Kind of Hope

Sometimes it becomes difficult to separate Jesus from his followers. As in "if a Christian says something, they must be speaking for Jesus, right?" Well, no. Not exactly. Don't get me wrong, that isn't a condemnation of Christ-followers; rather, it is simply an acknowledgment of reality. Many Christians act as if they know God's will, and that their words are direct from the Creator himself. An "agree with me or else" kind of attitude. It is no secret that I have become very disillusioned over the years with the church. Non-capitalized. I see many differences between what churches teach and what Jesus taught. I see a difference in focus between Christ and many of his followers. Myself included. (By the way, any time I rail on the church or organized religion, know that I'm not claiming to be innocent myself...I'm speaking about myself and to myself as much as about anyone else.)

I've written often in this space about my growing passion for the broken and marginalized. Developing my heart for poverty and need is perhaps my most important goal at the moment. My home church (the Vineyard in Colerain) has recently started down this path as well, jumping on the World Vision bandwagon and pushing the book The Hole in Our Gospel, which I cannot wait to read. Sitting through my pastor's sermon about God's heart for the poor last Sunday was one of the best church experiences I have had in a very long time.

Yet, even as I see my church (and many others) beginning to focus on the broken and empty and starving and alone, I still hear Pat Robertson saying that the earthquake in Haiti was vengeance from God. I can't escape Republican talking heads spouting that we should scrap the welfare system, despite the great good it does for many Americans in need. I see judgment placed on the poor and alone, on victims of AIDS and other diseases, on single mothers and children with no fathers. If that is what being Christian is about, I want no part of it.

But then I read this and am renewed:

He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
Psalm 146:7-9

That is the God I want to follow. The one who champions the oppressed and hungry. The one who heals the sick. The one who sustains the fatherless and the widows. The God who does the things I wish I could do, who loves the people I wish I could love when I cannot. I've seen God painted in many different ways over the years, as a warrior and a lover and a creator and a judge and a king. But God as a provider, a sustainer and a father to the broken, oppressed and alone is by far my favorite.

Hearing those words gives me hope. Hope that I can see the oppressed and hungry find real improvement in their lives. Hope that the fatherless and widows will experience love and strength in a tangible way. Hope that God might show me that love too. I've written before about acting in the name of hope, about doing things with that idea in the back of my mind. I'm certainly not backing off from that at all; I still believe that hope is acting in the name of truth, consequences be damned. But I'm starting to realize that those things I am passionate about are also God's passions. My hope can and will certainly manifest in actions, but now I believe it can simply be a state of being. Living in a perpetual state of hope. Maybe these are two different manifestations of hope, maybe they aren't all that different. I don't quite understand everything about that, what implications it has. But it is exciting to think about.

And so on...

Making Money Off Jesus

One of my pet peeves is the existence of the Christian bookstore. Family Christian Stores, Berean Christian Stores, etc. It bothers me that these places exist and are as prevalent as Hallmark or Barnes and Noble. Why do Christian bookstores bother me so much? They bother me because their primary reason for existence is to make money off Jesus.

The first I remember feeling such frustration with a Christian bookstore was the summer after my freshman year of college. My mother had asked me to pick up a book or cd or something for her from the store, so I swung by Family Christian after I got off work that day. Walking up to the store, I noticed a rack of shirts on sale outside the store. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the shirts all had a common theme: patriotic, God loves America themed shirts, complete with a matching Bible verse. Similar to this one. The message? America is better, and God loves us more. Oh, the theology.

According to Berean’s website, they stock over 170,000 products. Pardon my generality, but that is a ton of products, all targeted at the Christian community. All created in order to make a profit. A profit off the name of Jesus. Oh, the almighty dollar.

As a student and supporter of the free market, I understand that when a market exists untapped, someone will come along and fill that market segment. The Christian community is a huge segment of the market, and inevitably someone will begin to create products with the hopes that Christians will buy them. This is simple business, a fact that exists in every segment and within every community. But do Christians have to participate so willingly?

Let me step back once again and attempt full disclosure. Yes, I own Christian books and music. Some of my favorite authors are sold within Christian bookstores, such as Don Miller, Brennan Manning and others. Just yesterday I purchased four “Christian” books off the internet, and while two of them were authored by atheists, they were published by Christian publishers with the aim of selling them to Christians. Like me. And I bought them. Amazon is my friend.

I attempt full disclosure because I don’t want it to sound like I am condemning all Christian authors or Christian books. Not at all. Just parts of that culture. Like I said, I understand the need for the market to fill the Christian segment. If there is demand, supply will follow. Yet, I wish that people weren’t so eager and willing to make money off of Jesus.

It seems that within conversations like this, I always come back to a line from Saul Williams' poem The Sermon on the Mount of the Inevitable Progression from Saul to Saul; if you sense a bit of deja vu, it may be because I have cited this poem and line in a previous post. The poem reads: "how many tables and laptops and Cadillacs and pews and pulpits would be overturned in THIS day", and I wonder if Christian bookstores might be added to that list. When Jesus overturned the moneychangers' tables in the temple, it was (in part) because they were seeking to make a profit off God by charging Jews more than they should have been for temple money or sacrificial animals. Are Christian bookstores so different? Would Jesus walk into Berean and be pleased, or would he overturn tables? I wonder if his reaction would entail more of the latter than the former, and I wonder if anyone realizes it. (Certainly some do...check out this article for a unique perspective on the issue of making money off Jesus).

Thus, I have two requests. Not to anyone in particular; perhaps to those indefinable "powers that be". These are relatively minor; I would certainly not ask that these stores close and stop doing business.

First, stop making money off of The Good Message. If the goal of a Christian bookstore is to save souls rather than make money, why are Bibles sold? Why are they not given away instead? I can understand if an author must charge money for a book in order to make a living and be a self-sufficient member of society. But Bibles? Something tells me the authors of that book aren’t interested in profit making. I have an inkling that Jesus might not be a fan of his words being sold rather than given away freely. Leather bound, gold engraved and diamond encrusted (I jest) Bibles don't exactly fit with a message of love for the poor, broken and marginalized.

My second request is that Christian bookstores stop selling political texts and apparel. It bothers me when Christian authors write with the intention of being political or something similar. Example: you can find in any Christian bookstore a copy of How Would Jesus Vote?, a book attempting to convince you of how Jesus would vote on a number of contemporary issues. Don't even get me started on this one. Thing is, I don’t remember Jesus being very political. I remember Jesus avoiding politics completely and just focusing on people. When asked about his opinion of Caesar and paying Roman taxes, Jesus said "give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" (Matt 22:15-22); doesn't sound as if Jesus was very concerned with politics. But maybe that's just me. Amazingly, you can even find books by Sarah Palin, Laura Bush and even Michael Savage (title of his book: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder...you have got to be kidding me) in many "Christian" bookstores. Yes, those are links within the Christian bookstores' websites where you can buy them. Christian bookstores: stop combining Jesus with politics. And making money off the combination. I do not appreciate it.

Oh, one more thing. Please put away the America-is-a-Christian-nation-and-better-than-everyone-else shirts. I love my country as much as anyone, but to make it sound like we are more moral or religious than the rest of the world is sickening. As if Jesus loves us more because we are American. Oh, the humanity. Are we so quick to forget that Jesus was Jewish?

And so on…

Gandhi Had a Point

“I once heard someone say there are only two reasons people are not Christians. #1, They've never met a Christian. #2, They've met a Christian.”

Ran across this quote among some user reviews for a book I’m looking to buy (more on the book - Jim and Casper Go to Church - in a future post). I think there is a great deal of truth embedded within that statement. It reminds me of Gandhi’s famous quote: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Is Gandhi's quote fair? Honestly, I think it is. Without question, the Christian community (myself included) does many things that do not fit with the message of Jesus. We ostracize the homosexual community, ignore the homeless and pretend that going to church once a week makes us good people. And that just encompasses the most recent generations. I could go on and on about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Protestant-Catholic conflicts in Ireland, countless televangelists caught up in fraud and embezzlement. I do not mean to attack the entire church and claim that I am perfect; rather, I recognize my imperfections and hope for the church (as a whole) to do the same. It should not be acceptable for Jerry Falwell to say "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being", just as it should be unacceptable for the pope to try and brush child molestation by Catholic priests under the rug. To be fair, the majority of people I know who call themselves Christian (or Catholic) are as fed up with these sorts of actions and words as I am. I cannot think of any friends who support Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or take Benny Hinn seriously.

But even so, the Christian community is much larger than the small communities I am a part of. We would not know what Falwell and Robertson have to say if there were no audience that wanted to hear them. There should be no audience for James Dobson when he says that homosexuals (through gay marriage) "will destroy the Earth", yet Focus on the Family has 2.3 million monthly magazine subscribers. Are we, as the body of Christ, really willing to listen to and even support these individuals?

As Gandhi said, we Christians are so unlike our Christ. I know I struggle with this problem daily, sinning and judging despite my sincerest attempts to avoid those things. If the central message of Jesus is to love, to love God and love others (as I believe it is), then any message of morality or repentance must exist as a result of love, not of judgment. But instead of making love our first priority, it seems that the Christian community wants to make people change who they are as a prerequisite for being treated as human beings. I am embarrassed by opponents of gay marriage who slander entire communities of individuals and then wonder why LGTBQs aren’t attracted to the church. Shouting "God hates fags" at a ballgame does not send a message of love. Neither does holding up gruesome signs of aborted babies or protesting outside of Planned Parenthood. And so on. But I don't want it to sound like I am only speaking to the "radical" crowd. I know plenty of self-proclaimed Christians who voice their hatred of gays or liberals or Muslims on a regular basis; it may be subconscious and it may seem harmless, but spouting hateful rhetoric delivers a very different message than one of love - it sends a message of judgment and hypocrisy. And yet we wonder why young people are leaving the church in record numbers.

Certainly I am not arguing that Christians should support gay marriage or abortion or whatever, nor am I arguing that Christians should oppose them. Those are issues that we must all choose our own positions on, and we should be free to do so without the threat of being slandered by Christians who might think differently (on both sides). We are called to be Christ to the world, and that means that we are to love the world…even despite the world’s imperfections and flaws. Or maybe because of the flaws. But regardless, we are to love the world first. If we were all to do that as an entire body acting in the name of Christ, perhaps leaders like Falwell, Robertson and Dobson would be forced to consider their words more carefully, perhaps the pope would have to get his hands dirty and fix the problems of child molestation within the Catholic church, perhaps gays would feel welcome on Sunday morning. And maybe even Gandhi would begin to like our Christians.

And so on...