Is Our Testimony Attracting people to Christ? or Pushing Them Away?

     Not long ago our church had a booth at the local Pride Festival. We acknowledged that most of those in attendance had been hurt by some manifestation of Christianity, and we wanted to be a healing presence.

    During that afternoon, a couple of guys approached us, one with an open Bible in his left hand, his right forefinger jabbing at a single verse, claiming they wanted to “have a conversation” with us.

    They were lying, of course. They wanted to use the Bible to condemn us for reaching out in love to people guilty of the heinous abomination of homosexuality. Theirs was a daunting task, since there is no clear biblical injunction either condemning or confirming homosexuality.

    In the first place, the biblical word that is translated “abomination” means “liturgically improper” and includes certain food prohibitions, like shrimp and other shellfish, wearing wool and linen fabrics in the same garment, and a list of seven unethical behaviors that somehow never get included in today’s anti-LBGTQ+ rhetoric.

    The iconic Leviticus 18:22 used to condemn homosexuality is actually part of a long invective against worshipping in the temples of the Canaanite fertility cults, which is a part of the Holiness Code that extends from chapter 18 through the end of the book; moreover, the verse has as many as a half-dozen parallels in Deuteronomy and I & II Kings. “Worship” of those fertility gods involved copulation with the priests and priestesses (essentially sacred prostitutes) and included both heterosexual and homosexual intercourse—and even bestiality. Supposedly, the gods received sexual gratification vicariously through that form of “worship.”

    Maybe you can understand why the fertility cults were such an ongoing challenge to the faith of Israel.

    The Bible is an inspired and inspiring collection of faith testimonies of experiences of God’s presence and activities among God’s created humanity. It is not concerned with “proving” anything; rather, it assumes belief on the part of the readers.

    A need for proof is the opposite of faith.

    The Bible is inspired and inspiring—until someone uses it (or misuses it) to prove and inflict some specific understanding of some part of its testimonial content. At that point it ceases to be testimony and becomes a tool or even a weapon. Rather than a witness to God’s unqualified grace, it becomes the basis of a human harangue intended to confirm some human doctrine. It no longer is about God but about human intransigence.

    And the unpardonable sin is being wrong.

    In Mark 12:30-31, Jesus said the first and most important divine law is this: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” It’s from the Jewish creed, the “Shema,” from Deuteronomy 6:4. But Jesus didn’t stop there. He continues, “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:17-18). There is no other commandment greater than these.” Did you catch that last part? In Matthew’s version, Jesus closes with, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:40)

    There’s no lack of clarity, no wiggle room to squeeze in our human biases and doctrines. Any thought or action that fails to reflect love of God or love of neighbor is at least unimportant (per Mark), and at most (per Matthew) a contradiction of that upon which hangs all the law and the prophets. In Matthew, these two commandments become the key to interpreting all divine revelation.

    But rationalizations abound. In my own spiritual development I’ve done my share of finger-jabbing at verses taken out of context to justify unloving behavior. For example: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness...” (II Timothy 3:16)

    See? We’re supposed to use the Bible to correct (because we’re right)!

    Of course we are. And, like every human endeavor, there is an effective way, an ineffective way, and a counterproductive way. Obviously, a loving approach is the effective way. “Tough love,” while effective if applied properly, is virtually never applied in a way that communicates love.

    The Scottish Olympian and Rugby hero, Eric Liddell, said, “We are all missionaries; wherever we go, we either bring people closer to Christ or push them away."

    A major reason for the six-decade exodus from Church and the emergence of two generations of “spiritual-but-not-religious” people who never really got started in church began in the 1960s as a revulsion to aggressive, intrusive “evangelism” and the unloving behavior of some of the most visible representatives of Christianity. Whiile that unloving behavior represents a minority of Christians, it is perceived (often correctly) as judgmental and hypocritical. It pushes people away from Christ.

    There’s an unconfirmed story about a conversation between E. Stanley Jones and Mahatma Gandhi. Jones asked, “Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why do you seem so adamantly to reject becoming his follower?”

    Gandhi replied:” Oh, I don't reject Christ. I love Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.”

    Whether the story is fact or contrived, the truth of the statement attributed to Gandhi is confirmed in data from countless credible surveys and studies over the past quarter of a century.

    Jesus’ harshest criticism was aimed at religious authorities whose unloving and exclusionary decrees and judgments were counterproductive to the good news he proclaimed.

    The First Epistle of John repeatedly affirms the point, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (4:8).

    Even the hard rocking guitarist Jimi Hendrix got it: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

    What part of “love” is hard to understand?

    That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim