....but not forgotten

Seems a bit harsh....

This inspires me:

Carter is the co-host of BadChristian, a terrific podcast where three Christian guys (Carter, Toby Morrell, and Joey Svendsen) navigate the world of the modern American church, which has come to stand in for a whole bunch of movements — especially political ones — that have turned it into yet another cudgel in the culture wars between the right and left.

To play cranky old fart and point out there is no such thing as "the modern American church."  There are congregations, most as peculiar and prickly as families; there are denominations, some of which control some of what those congregations get up to, most of which who don't, and this notion:

As someone who’s recently gotten more involved in his local church, I wanted to talk with Carter about how Christians can get away from the kinds of behavior that have given them such a bad reputation.

For Carter, it’s all about relationships before dogma. He explains:

The only way past that is ... total acceptance. You could use the word grace from the Christian tradition, but I’m going to translate it as acceptance — like a radical acceptance of other people. I mean that on a big level, but really just on an individual level.

I would parallel that to my relationship with my wife. When I was dating my wife, she didn’t have the same faith that I did, and that bothered me. I wanted to be involved with her, and I wanted to get married to her, and I wanted to move forward with her, but I wasn’t willing to do that until she cleaned up her act or started thinking the right way or gotten right, in my view. And that was horrible and abusive and bad and ineffective and counterproductive and wrong.

It took years and years of nonsense that I thought was her fault, but it was always my fault, looking back on it. ... She comes from a family that’s less stable and some trauma in her background, and she always felt fundamentally unaccepted as a person. So you can only imagine how some asshole like me treating her that way would further the problem and cause other reactions.

It was only in spite of me when I understood the damage that I’d done — which is actually a spiritual communication to me that helped my eyes to be opened to what I was actually doing in that relationship —- that I could accept her without an agenda. And then it was, like, “Whoa. That just worked.” When I accepted her for who she was, she felt the security of that acceptance from me, and everything else fell into place.

That could apply to anything, even to groups. If you want to talk about LGBT people in church, or any time a Christian gets around somebody and they start trying to befriend a “sinner,” it stinks, it smells. You know there’s an agenda behind it. You know it’s a temporary acceptance until you can eventually “get right.” The agenda is there, and everybody knows it, and everybody smells it. It doesn’t work.

Real grace, I think the way the gospel really is or the way Jesus would really be, you wouldn’t feel or smell that agenda, where I’ll invite my “sinner” neighbors over tonight and show them that I “love” them, but they know they only have a certain amount of time before they have to convert and that will end. They know that they’re a project for you. That stinks. That smells, and everybody’s wise.

Real relationships have to be without agenda.

Is a truly lovely idea I learned all about in seminary, and went forth into the world ready to apply to every church I pastored.  Aside from my personal foibles and limitations, this is the single largest outside reason I don't preach in a church today.  Seeing what the problem is, and fixing the problem, are two very different things.  I'm all for "real relationships" being "without agenda."  Now start with your presumption that people want you to tell them that, that they want you to set them straight, that all they need is to hear it from you, or see you model it, or listen to you preach it, and the scales will fall from their eyes and they will agree with you and accept your theology (which is what it is) and follow you.

Don't apply it to groups.  Apply it to you.  It's the only way it works.  Don't think of the church as a thing.  Don't think of people as things.  We all do it; it's the easiest reflex in human society, because we are all fundamentally self-centered, we all have trouble imagining the other as other, and not just an extension of self.  Work on that.  It's a lifelong effort.  It's the work of Christianity, of being first of all by being servant of all.  The servant doesn't direct the master.  The servant doesn't set the master straight.  The servant doesn't tell the master what "real grace" is; because all of that puts the servant above the master.

It's a hard truth; but it's really the only way the church can "overcome its bad reputation."  And maybe you start that larger project by not thinking of "the church" as "the church."  Because, really, even among the Roman Catholics or the Orthodox, there is no such thing.  Hard to change what isn't there.  Harder still to change people who aren't you.

Work on you, by serving them.  "Real relationships have to be without agenda," after all.