Last Friday, another mass school shooting rocked our
world.
As the days have passed by, media and America
has increased its cry for something to be done.
Neither political party seems to have an answer and no "expert"
on guns, education, and psychiatry can manage an intelligible answer except for
"we need to have more conversations."
Do Americans not realize that we are wasting time by
talking about the need to have conversations on the tough issues when we could simply start having these conversations? The need was there long before last week...why
weren't we talking then? And what about
those who have been trying to talk all along but their message hasn't been
heard? A knee-jerk response will create
ineffective legislation which will hurt, label and probably tax more than help. But then prolonging the conversations will
make our instant-gratification society bored and quickly forget what is
important and why.
In talking, we must not forget the conversations within our
churches. Why not
consider looking at what Christians have allowed our churches to become? What are we doing to help the mentally ill
aside from raising our eyebrows at their vulnerability when they admit that
they are taking meds and later gossiping about them (via the "prayer
request" method) as if we have never struggled with seasons of anxiety,
depression or loneliness ourselves? What
are we doing to reach out to today's young adults aside from saying, "Yes,
we want you in church!" but then fail to reach out to them outside of
their own programming or give support beyond the Sunday or Wednesday
service? What are we doing to be voices
in our community when we can't even find our own voices in our own churches to
stand up against compromise, cliques and comfortable faith?
We have created this bubble that exists within our
churches. Within this bubble, we are
comfortable and safe. And, whoa! Shame on the person who dares to speak up against
that bubble! I learned that the hard way
this week as I made a FB comment about the shooter and then quickly deleted it
after being reprimanded.
We are the ones who have graded ours (and everyone else's) sins. We are the ones who created standards and then rationalized them when we couldn't keep them ourselves. We are the ones who have taken over God's
decision on who is worthy of God's love and who is not! We've fooled ourselves into thinking that we
aren't that bad but in reality, we are all mere choices away from committing a
heinous crime. The only difference is
that we are choosing Christ. We have
chosen to experience His mercy, forgiveness and grace!
While we saw lostness in the worst way last week, I can’t
help but see that God’s love still overshadows everything! Are we supposed to ignore the fact that this
shooter and every other criminal is made in God's image just like us? That if that criminal accepted Christ, then he would be
in heaven next to us? That thought is a
little nauseating, honestly. And then I have to stop and listen to myself as I
judge this man and hold him to what I think God wants while totally ignoring my
own sins in the process. Is not envy or gossip or failing to rest in the same Ten Commandments list
as murder and adultery? Did not the same
God who fashioned me with His hands fashion that murderer with His hands also? Did not the same God who sent His
son to die on the cross die for that man as well? Doesn't the Bible mention that God is not a respecter
of persons so that means God offers mercy, love, forgiveness and judgment to
everyone equally? And that all of this comes down to personal choice?
What missions/ministry opportunities have been lost
because we failed to see and love others as God does? Please know that in no way
am I condoning what happened last week, but I can't help but see a broken, lost young man--a man that, who knows, might have made a completely opposite choice had the Body of Christ stepped in and ministered to his family from the beginning. This family might have made different choices
had a Believer taken time to simply hear the desperate cries of this mother who
was at her wits end. Or, they might have been
led to resources and/or connections to Christian professionals who believed
in the power of prayer and in the power of God to transform lives.
I look around me and see broken people
everywhere...no one is exempt from brokenness. How many times do I pretend not to see brokenness because I don't know what to say or do? How many times have we wished that someone (even
someone from our own churches) would step outside of Facebook and/or the Sunday
services and be a real face, a real ear, a real hug or a real voice? What if that was the one chance that would
change the course of everything in that person’s life? What if that was the one chance that could have prevented last week's deaths from happening?
After last week, we have got to pop that safe Christian
bubble that we're in! We have to go
against the grain, have courage to leave our church cliques and man-made ideals behind and look at life through
God’s eyes! We also have to nurse
the broken in our churches so we can nurse the broken outside of our churches.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable, it's messy and it's real. When we get beyond ourselves and see the
heart of God yet fail to act, our lives become equally uncomfortable, messy and
real as we make a blatant choice to ignore God and reap the consequences of it (been
there, done that and it's not fun)!
I keep sensing this urgency that we are missing the mark as
the church and it's time to stop playing around, time to stop sitting in our
comfy churchy bubbles and truly live out what the Bible says. For those who already are, hope is around the
corner and we have to stay the course and know Who we are looking at regardless
of who is (or isn’t) walking alongside us! It's tough and it's lonely sometimes, but keep hanging on!
