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Hey guys,
Why are so many people turned off by Christians and by our churches? I think it has to do with our lack of honesty and vulnerability.
Jesus reached out to some very surprising people. He showed up in some very surprising places and he said some very surprising things. Unlike him, we generally do what is expected of “religious” people. Being a “good citizen” is not the same thing as being a Christian, but in our society, goodness and Christian are used interchangeably. So church becomes the place where a nice, pleasant, bland person stands in front of other nice, pleasant, bland people urging them to be nicer, more pleasant, and more bland. Jesus didn’t die to create nice, pleasant, bland people. He died so that sinners would find grace and forgiveness, and, in the joy and exuberance of their discovery, would find it impossible to keep quiet about it.
It’s worth noting that Jesus didn’t condemn bad people. He condemned “stiff” people. We condemn the bad ones and affirm the stiff ones. Whether it was a prostitute or a tax collector or an outcast…Jesus reached out to them. It was a motley crew of riffraff that followed him around, and it never embarrassed him or made him feel uncomfortable. It still doesn’t. But he’s still angry at the “stiff” ones.
One of the most radical statements Jesus ever made is found in Matthew 9. We’ve sanitized it and made it fit our institutional molds, and thus allowed it to lose its power. I’m referring to these words of his...
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