We are...
"Community is the state of being together in which people, instead of hiding behind their defenses, learn to lower them, in which instead of attempting to obliterate their differences, people learn not only to accept them but rejoice in them."
~M. Scott Peck
Have you seen Guardians of the Galaxy yet?
Go see it or go see it again.
I'm so grateful for stories about misfits, losers, and sinners. This one is about being lost and then being found. About losing family and gaining one and how we can do the miraculous in the context of family.
But only because each person is different and offers something,
some quality,
the others don't possess.
This is so different than the way we go about life and church. We homogenize ourselves. We find the people that look like us or the people who think the same things we do and snuggle down into a warm blanket of close minded acceptance. But it isn't family.
It's pretending to be family.
Nobody really enjoys fighting. Nobody wants tension.
But we need it. We need people to disagree with us. We need people to say no. We need people who will do all of that and stay with us.
Because family is more important than ideology. People are more important than ideas. Nobody has it all figured out yet. And the more we isolate ourselves from people that might have something different to say, the less we know about the world.
It's all idle talk.
Last week, the world (and by world I mean people who hadn't listened to him speak) found out that Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill church was a misogynist. His internet rants under a pseudonym 14 years ago reflect the hyper-masculinity of a boy who was never told he was good enough - a boy who had the goal posts of masculinity moved on him, again and again.
What's interesting to me is not his rants. But how he got away with thinking and saying those things for such a long time.
The answer is obvious. He surrounded himself with people who thought the same thing and bull-dozed anyone that might disagree. You cant create families that way just small kingdoms with even smaller despots.
Mark Driscoll needs Rachel Held Evans. Calvinists need Arminians. Evangelicals need main line protestants. Protestants need Catholics. Christians need the rest of the world.
And the objects of those sentences need the subjects.
We need our enemies to show us our weaknesses, to tell the story about us that we don't want anyone to know, to remind us of how we fail to love the way God does.
We need a love bigger than the one we have. A love big enough to call out someone when they are wrong. A love big enough to welcome someone home when they were wrong. A love big enough to admit we are wrong sometimes. A love bigger than our differences. A love that celebrates them.
Then we can be a family.
~M. Scott Peck
Have you seen Guardians of the Galaxy yet?
Go see it or go see it again.
I'm so grateful for stories about misfits, losers, and sinners. This one is about being lost and then being found. About losing family and gaining one and how we can do the miraculous in the context of family.
But only because each person is different and offers something,
some quality,
the others don't possess.
This is so different than the way we go about life and church. We homogenize ourselves. We find the people that look like us or the people who think the same things we do and snuggle down into a warm blanket of close minded acceptance. But it isn't family.
It's pretending to be family.
Nobody really enjoys fighting. Nobody wants tension.
But we need it. We need people to disagree with us. We need people to say no. We need people who will do all of that and stay with us.
Because family is more important than ideology. People are more important than ideas. Nobody has it all figured out yet. And the more we isolate ourselves from people that might have something different to say, the less we know about the world.
It's all idle talk.
Last week, the world (and by world I mean people who hadn't listened to him speak) found out that Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill church was a misogynist. His internet rants under a pseudonym 14 years ago reflect the hyper-masculinity of a boy who was never told he was good enough - a boy who had the goal posts of masculinity moved on him, again and again.
What's interesting to me is not his rants. But how he got away with thinking and saying those things for such a long time.
The answer is obvious. He surrounded himself with people who thought the same thing and bull-dozed anyone that might disagree. You cant create families that way just small kingdoms with even smaller despots.
Mark Driscoll needs Rachel Held Evans. Calvinists need Arminians. Evangelicals need main line protestants. Protestants need Catholics. Christians need the rest of the world.
And the objects of those sentences need the subjects.
We need our enemies to show us our weaknesses, to tell the story about us that we don't want anyone to know, to remind us of how we fail to love the way God does.
We need a love bigger than the one we have. A love big enough to call out someone when they are wrong. A love big enough to welcome someone home when they were wrong. A love big enough to admit we are wrong sometimes. A love bigger than our differences. A love that celebrates them.
Then we can be a family.
Comments
Post a Comment