**For future reference, frogging is frustrated blogging.**
This week I overheard a devout Christian make a statement about a couple of young teenagers that have recently taken up smoking an illegal substance. She doesn't know them personally.
"Well, they're just losers."
She was quick to add a qualifier, smiling.
"But not in God's eyes, of course."
Indeed, follower of Christ. Of course not.
I do wonder when the church will realize that what we say when we think it doesn't matter are the things that often highlight our own brokenness.
Are the jokes we make really jokes, or are they a transparent wall behind which we feel comfortable enough to simultaneously hide and reveal our prejudice? How truthful is the classic, "Oh come on, you know I was just kidding?"
Not three hours before I overheard this, I spent an hour listening to a woman tell me of her experience with a hypocritical and judgmental church. She was treated differently based on the color of her skin, and she watched an entire group of people reading and preaching one thing while living another. She's not been to church in years.
Are we willingly amen-ing sermons on the equality Jesus demonstrated as long as our pew-mates are the same as we are?
Do we overlook sins of which we're guilty but leave no grace for those sins with which we ourselves have not struggled?
Mostly, would Jesus have called these guys losers?
The American church is insufferably pharisaical. Why are we so willing to say, "I'm a Christian, and there is grace for you," and in the same breath refer to two perfect strangers as losers for smoking marijuana? Why are we so willing to admit that God sees them differently than that while refusing to do so ourselves?
When people are paying attention, we are careful to say what we know to be true.
"Not in God's eyes, of course."
When we're not so careful, we are quick to offer our own opinion.
"Well, they're just losers."
Why are our hearts dense? Why do we have a hard time looking behind the pot smoking to find the hurt behind it? Why do we emphasize behavior and forget about the heart?
A scary question – do we honestly care about the heart?
Before you answer with your Sunday School yes, think about it. Perhaps it's that our real interest is in being superior, knowing that at least we aren't like that addict or this homosexual, that at least I haven't been pregnant like her or imprisoned like him. Do we plan on taking those things to the pearly gates and presenting God with a checklist of things we didn't do, content to ignore the things we did because they weren't on the list of moral abhorrences we made?
I don't claim to be perfect at this. Grace is difficult to give. (For me it's difficult to give to the Pharisees that won't give it to sinners like me.)
However, it is my honest and anguished prayer that we would start trying. When we can begin to look past our invented morality and realize that we are all human, that we all have very real, very honest, very embarrassing struggles, and that we all are stuck in this broken world together, maybe we will stop calling people losers and start caring about them.
Maybe we'll even start calling out their inner winner.
Maybe we'll see that they are worth calling "winner" while they're still struggling.
And maybe we'll actually start to see with God's eyes, in which they
(of course)
are not losers.
m
