Hand Sanitizer

Sometimes my mind wanders...Sure many will interject "Squirrel," here, but that is not the case for my wanderings. In the wanderings of my mind's eye I often times wonder, what does Jesus think about His Bride today? Who are we faithful to? His way or the world's way...

I am talking about a place where truth is truth. But we must ask, do we want the messy, unsanitized version of truth? What pains me is the thought that many in the church do not want Jesus' way and life of truth because such truth disrupts as is re-directs. It challenges as it transforms. It asks us daily, "who do you say I am?"

Instead of the truth of Jesus, we want a sanitized version - a Hippy Dude that walks around in Birkenstocks telling everyone "Hey man don't worry, be happy. The future is bright with optimism."

Is the Jesus being preached anywhere near the man from Nazareth? Do we preach Jesus so to become pious or are we too pious to even preach Jesus? Is what we are handing out as authentic faith simply another form of hand sanitizer…cleaning the outside while leaving the inside still dirty? Do we seek to satisfy the masses by telling them what they want to hear? Is the church leading culture or culture leading church?

I wonder if we are missing the Truth. Instead of wondering why people are the way they are, we need to seek to understand and love them. Instead of believing that love is love, we should be showing the world what it means to be bound to the insane love of Jesus - a love that sets the prisoner free, clothes the homeless and loves the sinner. A love that shines light upon the darkness so as to give us sight. G.K. Chesterton said: 

Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

Faith is dynamic - at least the Christian faith is because the God of Christianity is dynamic. Through the action of revelation, God - in Christ, through the Spirit - takes life, and as theologian Karl Barth illumines, 

sets it into crisis, shaking its false foundations, and bringing to bear upon it the very Goodness of God.

Through such a shaking, our faith and our theological endeavors can begin to understand the confrontation between Creator and creature; an inter-action whereby the creature is confronted by the mystery comparable only to the impenetrable darkness of death, in which God veils Himself precisely when He unveils, announces, and reveals to the human Himself and the crazy intensity of His love. Such love is what breaks the chains of oppression, shatters the power of death and breaks down the walls of division. This is the reality of Jesus' messy, unsanitized crazy insane love - a love that makes right what the darkness has disjointed, makes beautiful what sin has defiled. This is the insane love the world is in need of! 

What the world does not need is for the church to follow its lead. Nor does the world need more rhetoric and reasons it is wrong- what the world needs is more Jesus and more Love. What are you doing to give the world what it needs?