TIVI

Collection: Faith

Est. Read Time: 5 Minutes

I love the church. I love people. I want both to overcome the struggles of this world and live in beautiful relationship with themselves, with one another, and with God.

I pray for that often. Not because I think it’s impossible, but because I think we’ve forgotten how possible it actually is. We don’t need a miracle from God to decide to love one another. We don’t need a miracle from God to care for each other’s needs. We don’t need a miracle from God to stop treating one another like enemies. We don’t have to wait for some distant day in the future for Jesus to return and establish His Kingdom for that to happen.

The ability to love one another…is the miracle. I believe that’s exactly the Kingdom He came to establish the first time. Yet we often look toward heaven waiting for God to do something He has already placed within our reach.

One of the questions people ask me most is how I can still love God after everything that happened to me inside the church. It’s a fair question. My answer usually surprises people.

The church never caused me to question Jesus. It caused me to question whether we still look very much like Him.

I am not a theologian. I don’t have advanced degrees. I haven’t spent years studying church history. God simply gave me a brain. I can read. And I can compare.

I can compare the Jesus I meet in the Gospels with the churches we have built in His name. Sometimes they look remarkably similar. Sometimes…they don’t.

Years ago I came across a passage from Brennan Manning that put words to something I had been struggling to understand for a very long time.

“Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last ‘trick’, whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

‘But how?’ we ask. Then the voice says, ‘They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’

There they are. There we are—the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.”

I believe there are a lot of churches filled with people and leadership who are very uncomfortable with this fact of Jesus’ character. Every time I read those words, I find myself asking the same question. If the churches we build in Jesus’ name aren’t filled with people exactly like the ones Brennan Manning describes…have we misunderstood Jesus?

Those are the people I see gathered around Him throughout the Gospels. The ashamed. The addicted. The outcasts. The failures. The doubters. The people everyone else had already decided were beyond hope. Including me. And those are exactly the people I see Jesus moving toward.

One of the reasons I still believe in Jesus is because I cannot make Him look like some of the things I’ve experienced in church.

Years ago, a maintenance employee at our church was caught stealing a small amount of money from the offering. He struggled with addiction. He had financial problems. Life had finally become heavier than he could carry.

After he was caught, our pastor stood before the congregation and announced what had happened. The elders, he explained, had graciously decided not to press criminal charges. There was almost a sense that everyone could breathe easier. Justice had been tempered with mercy.

Then he told us the rest. The man had lost his job, and he was no longer welcome to attend our church. I understood every reason they gave. It made perfect organizational sense. It made very little sense when I compared it to Jesus.

Not long afterward, another staff member—this time a leader—was discovered to be having an affair. Again there was an announcement. Again there was termination. Again there was removal from the community. Again…I understood the logic. I simply struggled to find Jesus in it.

The more I read the Gospels, the more I noticed something. Jesus consistently frustrated people because He refused to follow the logic everyone else thought was obvious. He touched lepers. He defended women everyone else condemned. He ate with tax collectors. He restored Peter after Peter publicly denied even knowing Him.

Again and again, Jesus seemed less interested in protecting His reputation than restoring broken people. The words that continually come to mind are these: radical love. Radical grace. Not because they are sentimental. Because they are profoundly inconvenient.

I’ve slowly realized that radical love isn’t simply loving people when it’s easy. Radical love is moving toward people at the very moment everyone else thinks we should move away. That is exactly what I see Jesus doing. Again. And again. And again.

I’ve started asking myself a question whenever someone hurts me: “What would I be justified in doing?” Usually the answer comes quickly. Distance yourself. Protect yourself. Cut them off. Make sure everyone knows they were wrong.

Then I ask a second question: “What would radical love and radical grace require of me?”

The answer is almost always much harder. Not because Jesus ignored sin. He didn’t. Not because He abandoned truth. He never did. But because He never seemed interested in separating truth from love.

Every time I begin feeling justified in protecting my pride, my anger, or my righteous indignation, I remember that Jesus never seemed very interested in protecting His. He laid His down. Every single time.

The only time I consistently see Jesus entertaining his anger is when religious leaders use their position to place burdens on people rather than lift them. His strongest words were rarely directed toward broken people. They were directed toward those who had forgotten why God gave them authority in the first place. The more I compare today’s church with those encounters, the more familiar Jesus’ warnings begin to sound.

As for extending radical love and radical grace toward the church…I’m still learning. And if I’m honest…I’m not very good at it yet.

People sometimes ask me how I can still love the church after everything that happened to me. The answer is actually very simple. I don’t love the church because I think we’ve gotten everything right. Far from it. I love the church because I still believe Jesus got it right.

I refuse to let the failures of people redefine the character of Christ. The more I compare Him with us, the more convinced I become that His way is still better.

I believe the church Jesus came to establish still exists today. Sometimes in large congregations. Sometimes in living rooms. Sometimes around recovery tables. Sometimes in prison ministries. Sometimes in places no one would ever think to look. Usually…it’s found wherever people quietly choose radical love over self-preservation, truth over image, people over institutions, and grace over reputation.

I don’t expect every church to become perfect. I do hope more churches become places where broken people instinctively believe they’ll be loved before they’re evaluated.

So yes…I love the church. The one that sometimes forgets its purpose, and the one quietly living it every day. Both are deeply loved by Christ. Both are still being transformed by grace. Both are invited to become more like Him.

When I really started reading the Gospels for myself—setting aside my assumptions, my disappointments, and even my own experiences—something unexpected happened. I stopped asking whether I could still believe in Jesus because of the church.

I started asking whether the church still believed Jesus.

That question changed everything for me. If Jesus had ostracized the thief…and the adulterer…He wouldn’t have had disciples.

I’ll leave you with the words that continue to challenge me more than almost anything else Brennan Manning ever wrote:

“Do the truth quietly without display.”

The older I get, the more I compare myself—and the church—to Jesus. And the clearer that comparison becomes.

Reflection: Radical love is moving toward people at the very moment everyone else thinks we should move away.

Continue the Journey:

Previous: 012. The Ninety-Nine: When communities become crowds.

Next: 014. If I Sue the Church Will God Be Mad At Me?

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Why This Library Exists

TIVI exists because no one should have to walk the road toward healing, accountability, and restoration alone.

Every story in this library was written to offer one or more of three things:

• Experience – So you know someone else has been there.
• Strength – So you can borrow courage when yours is running low.
• Hope – So you can believe healing and accountability are still possible.

If even one story helps you take the next right step, then it was worth writing.

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