When I heard how a big shot Christian had bilked mission money in Venezuela to line his own pockets, I didn’t so much as blink. Years earlier during college, a summer mission landed me with him for a week. I’d only been in his room at the Hyatt a few minutes before I realized I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. He enjoyed expensive food and wore gold rings the size of silver dollars like small pets on his meaty fingers. He liked to treat himself to $10 manicures at his favorite Caracas nail parlor. I remember one afternoon him insisting we had to go see “a guy.” We walked into a jewelry shop, where he and the owner leaned on opposite sides of a glass case and whispered and argued and leaned in closer as they haggled over something that I think had to do with precious metals up in the mountains. It was all hush-hush. I had no idea what was going on, but it was shady x 100.
I’m not the smartest fellow, but I was pretty certain this wasn’t God’s work. Unfortunately I’ve seen shady over and again since then, and yes, often by the very people who quote their Scripture and say their prayers. You don’t have to be around long to find out that lots of Christians act like devils. Sometimes it’s embarrassing to be a Christian. Worse, being a Christian will inevitably leave you scarred. Joining this community of salvation means being thrown in the lot with the very hellions, like us, who actually need redemption.
Since I’m breathing and have two ears, I know the Church has created a wake of wounded people. I have wounds of my own. We only need to read the Bible a few pages to realize our Book doesn’t give us a sugar-coated story of people who, once deciding to follow the Holy, embark on a constant arc of righteousness. Our faithful kin murder and swindle and ravage. And we continue the story. We can be the meanest, the greediest, the most obnoxious. I know more than a few Christians who are generous and selfless and love with abandon, but we all know there’s a malignant side to our story too.
I offer no excuse for this vileness, only sorrow. Abusers must be named and wrongs brought to light and oppressive or destructive ideas dismantled. My knees knock when I hear Peter’s words that judgment must begin with the family of God. I believe evil done in God’s name is the worst form of wickedness.
And yet, despite all our hypocrisy and lunacy, I believe in the Church more than I ever have. The Church is not a place where good people get better but a place where awful people see the truth and find hope, if we’ll have it, to be new. The Church is a visible community offering tangible grace in the world not because the people who inhabit her are so winsome or moral but rather because God, in Jesus, takes ugly things and makes them beautiful. The story of Jesus is, if nothing else, the story of mercy to the very ones who least deserve it. So of course, the mercy starts with us. God knows we need it.
The Church is necessary, a scarred beauty, because Jesus inhabits this mess of a people. Jesus does not stay aloof from the ruin, but puts both feet smack in the mucky center. Jesus harrows even hell. And then God uses the smoldering, scattered pieces – think of it – as the fragments for restoration. Jesus makes a bunch of people I’d typically avoid to be his presence in the world. If you wanted grace to be the theme of your story, how else would you do it?
And so we do not navigate around the mess or try to remove ourselves from the trouble, the ambiguity. We don’t spin our mental wheels pining after some idyllic pure church. We suffer with it. Like Jesus.
Flannery O’Connor says it well:
I think the Church is the only thing that is going to make a terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the church as for it….
“Jesus makes a bunch of people I’d typically avoid to be his presence in the world.” Yes to this. And to think – I’m one of the Avoidables!
Interesting article. The older I get the more I see our nation becoming so much
like the nation of Israel. A majority like Gods blessings but don’t want to follow Him. Jesus is the ONE that gives us hope.
Thank you – for so many things. I needed this truth today.
Winn, thanks again, as always, for your words. This is shot through with love and hope. Thanks for daring to believe that Christ meant it when he said he loves his bride and he’ll guide her home. We need this reminder more than ever.
I hadn’t thought about this fact. I rather liked thinking most people on mission for God were on mission for God. When I give to mission, I feel most of it goes to God’s work or I wouldn’t give to that mission. But I know what you say here, is true as we had a pastor that stole from our church in the name of benevolence. Of course it caught up with him. It just messes with my JOY when that happens.
Like the ancient custom of repairing pottery cracks with gold…Kintsukuroi ..we are broken and when God puts us back together we are worth even more than before.