Christianity is not a solo adventure

The way we treat relationships is truly bizarre and I never realized this until I finished Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.

First off, I highly recommend reading this book (like, order it after reading this or just order it now he’s a better writer than me).

Miller wraps things up on the topic of love, and a realization he had listening to a speaker give a talk on metaphors. Namely the fact that we use economic metaphors to describe relationships (we value people, invest in people, treasure people, etc).

For context, Miller writes about his time away from the church and trying to reconcile the fact that he found good and loving people outside church and this all clicked for him:

“This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all the years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did"

It clicked for me too.

I grew up in the church and I did many of the 'right' things: I went to youth group every week, ran a Bible study in college, and joined a church after graduating.

A few years later I met a wonderful Jewish woman who I dated and later married.

I remember when we first started dating. It was a sunny Sunday morning after getting out of church when I was approached by a woman who told me “you really should feel relieved because the Bible says it's very clear you are disobeying God by seeing this woman” or something to that effect. There were other incidents like this, but that is not the point.

I love my wife. And I do honestly believe God brought us together for a purpose. As with any marriage, my hope is that it brings both of us closer to the people God had in mind when He made us.

I read Blue Like Jazz when I was in high school and it did not sink in then, but now I get it. Like Miller, I know what it feels like to be on the outside looking in and how painful and damaging that can be to your faith.

Look through the Bible and you will find very few people God talks directly to. We get a warped sense of scripture that we all get to hear from God one on one, but just take a look at a few examples:

• Moses spoke to God on behalf of thousands of Israelites (including Aaron, the high priest!)
• King David and Solomon were the only kings God spoke directly to, everyone else just got prophets to relay the message
• Jesus chose 12 disciples out of who knows how many asked to join Him

I’m not saying God never talks to us; just from experience for most of us, we encounter God at work through other people. What a tragedy it is when we look at others and assign them value and decide to withhold love from them for not meeting our expectations.

I’m not going to lie to you, when I was in the in-crowd it gave me an incredible sense of belonging, acceptance, and purpose. Here’s the problem: I was getting all of that from people and not from God.

How far from the Gospel my heart must have been. In fact, Jesus has words for the kind of person I was turning into.

"[The scribes and Pharisees] do all their deeds to be seen by others... They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them."

Matthew 23: 5-7, 13-14.

Replace the above with a place of honor at small group, best seats in church, and greeted with respect at the Sunday ice cream social and it's pretty much the same today.

I was so caught up in the admiration from others that I forgot what it meant to accept and be sustained by the grace of Jesus. The past few years have been difficult, and damaging. Especially with church being remote for a year, I’ve felt a weakening in my faith.

Perhaps it’s not that my faith was weakened, but that God removed an idol from my life and I realize I was chasing after the love from others instead of love from Him. As painful as it was, and sometimes still is, I would not have it any other way. Thankfully I am in a good church and have a decent community there. I still fall into the trap of trying to justify myself with reasons I should be valued but instead of judgment, I am met with grace.

I now know what it feels like to stand before Jesus like the woman bleeding for 12 years, the tax collector climbing the tree, or the woman caught in adultery. To come up with your reasons, explanations, and manufactured self-worth to then be told you are worth far more than you gave yourself credit for and not because of what you did or did not do, but because God just loves you.  

Christianity is not a solo journey. God does not appear to us in silos and magically make us perfect.

He works on us, and asks us to work on others in community. As people who call ourselves followers of Christ, this presents an incredible responsibility. We who have been granted the love of Jesus are commanded to pour that love out on others. When we withhold it, we push people away from God not towards repentance and we devalue the Gospel.

It's not up to us to decide who to love or who counts as a Christian. It's up to us to love others unconditionally and point them towards Christ. If, like me, you have been hurt by the church please leave with this: no one but God can tell you what you are worth, how close you are to God, or how much God loves you.