Someone said something to me on the weekend; just a fragment right at the end of a social gathering. She mentioned my FB feed and how I posted interesting things on a Christian perspective: not just the standard Christian lines that are parroted by evangelical Christians (and, yes, misrepresented in a worldly context, but we exist in a worldly context), but Christians who are struggling with those grey areas that conservative evangelicals like to paint as black and white.
Women in ministry. Gays in the church. Abortion. You know, those things.
I wonder if 'the world' wants to see Christians struggling more with these questions. Publically struggling. Admitting they don't know the right/wrong of it, or even admitting that they have a right/wrong of it but being willing to let others make those decisions themselves, wrong though they might be.
Sometimes I wonder if our solidarity of belief as Christians isn't a deterrent as much, if not more than, our apparent behaviour. And not just coming to the easy blanket answer: "well of course slavery is okay, because Christians have owned slaves since the time of Paul, right? So it can't have been wrong..."
And, no, the media is not on our side. That doesn't mean they're always wrong about the ways that we're bull-headed and stupid. Just because Scott Morrison claims to be a Christian doesn't mean he's not also a complete shitwit with zero sensitivity and formulated compassion.
"Be cunning as serpents and innocent as doves," Jesus said. Naivete is not any kind of an excuse, and yet so often it seems to be the first Christian defence: "I didn't know."
We are to know the truth - the truth of the gospel, absolutely, but also the truth of ourselves and our world. To see the flaws in ourselves, admit to them, improve on them. No, it doesn't guarantee our salvation, but it pushes us slowly towards becoming made in the image of Jesus.
My mother's church friends told her that she was wrong to remarry, that she should wait and maybe God's direction for her life would become clear. She was okay to re-marry by our modern Christian mores (my father had been unfaithful to her which most modern ministers would say was okay because my father had broken the intimacy of the relationship and so she was free to remarry), but her husband-to-be was not because he and his wife had divorced for the modern "irreconcilable differences".
The church they went to would not let them get married in the building, so they left the church. All the church. For almost a decade.
Sometimes I think insisting we all toe the black and white and shaming people when they don't manage it does more damage than the admission that we're struggling with something, and trusting in God's grace in the meantime.
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There are four women I was friends with a decade ago and more.
In the last three months, they have all turned up on my FB feed commenting on things that they disagree with (environmentalism), or things that they want to get 'woke points' for (not being racist).
The irony is that not one of these four women has extended an independent "Hi, how are you?" to me in that decade. They have made no overtures of friendship, asked no questions about my life - they haven't even hit LIKE on my FB posts. And, yes, I notice these things.
I notice the people who come by and comment on stuff - innocuous stuff, stuff that isn't Christian or political, which is just every day life. "I love your quilting work." "Ooh, nice garden!" "Are you okay?" These four women do not fall into the 'everyday friend' category - not even on FB.
They cannot be arsed to care about my life apart from when I post something that either makes them feel good about themselves, or which challenges their beliefs.
YES. I NOTICE.
And if I notice this about fellow "sisters in Christ", you can bet your blue, winged donkey that non-Christians notice this about the Christians who are intent on morally policing them.
High-up Christian leaders bemoan that people don't follow 'moral values' anymore, that the church is no longer a voice in the community.
Maybe - just maybe - this is because so few Christians are part of the community. And if Christians haven't done the hard yards of friendship, then non-Christians are not going to listen to them. That's the plain and simple truth.
Paul knew this - of course he did as one of a bare handful of Christians in a pantheistic society where worth was dictated by the gods, not by a declaration of human rights. To the Greeks, he became a Greek; to the Jews, he became a Jew.
And, no, a lot of people who we befriend are not going to listen to the gospel from Christian lips anymore. They've heard it all before and it's like the screech of nails down blackboard to their ears as high-profile leaders are shown to be abusers, to be bigots, to be willing to hitch their carts to the morally corrupt individuals in the name of political power.
What 'the world' will be willing to listen to is the language of love: an ear hearing their pain and sorrow and frustration, a voice crying out for justice for all people not just for the people who are like the voice crying out, a handhold - not even a 'hand-up or a hand-out' that our politicians like to dichotomise - someone to say "you are here, and maybe I can help by being here, too".
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I saw a phrase via Michael Frost’s FB last year: ‘once born’ and ‘twice born’ Christians. ‘Once born’ Christians find their faith and never question it. God is there, he is holy, he is great, he is good. They hold to that all their life and it’s not difficult. ‘Twice born’ Christians find their faith, but they might struggle at some point, lose it, walk away, grieve, and in the end come back to the faith again. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s a faith rooted in trust in God and his promises, not in the reality of their lives.
I don't know that I've been twice born; I've never lost my faith, although I drifted away from the church. But I am very grateful for those years spent drifting, learning ways outside the traditions of my childhood, discovering people living on the fringes and the edges of the world that I was brought up in. I like to think it's given me compassion and understanding, and the ability to walk into greyscales that I don't think too many Christians are comfortable walking in - and as a result, they struggle to do anything but black and white the situation and other people's choices.
And maybe someday one of my non-Christian friends will be able to say, "Well, I don't know that I agreed with Sel, but she managed to love me in a way that made me feel valuable and said it was because of Jesus, so maybe I'll give Jesus a(nother) go..."
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