Several years ago, Ellen DeGeneres had a great conversation with an older woman in Austin, Texas named Gladys. You can watch the YouTube video here now, if you wish.
The question is asked: What should I do to lead a Christian life? The bible answers that question in several places. Romans 12 gives a long list describing the life of believers: Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers; and so on. If that’s too general, there’s the long parable at the end of Matthew 25: I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you gave me clothing, sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me. That may still feel like too long a list, so Jesus, at the Last Supper, condensed everything down to one, new commandment found in John 13: Love one another. As I have loved you, you should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
At some point, though, the focus shifted from how we live our life with others to how we live our lives by ourselves. Christian faith became equated with morality. Suddenly being Christian was less about the love we show and more about the long list of things we are not supposed to do. If you’re a Christian, now you’re told you can’t smoke, you can’t drink, you can’t say cuss words, you can’t wear white pants after Labor Day. Over the years, we just kept adding things to the “Do not do” list. As a Christian, you can’t ever do drugs, be an addict, look at porn, be divorced or gay, be a felon or depressed or have suicidal thoughts. We ignored what Christians are supposed to do, as described in Romans 12, Matthew 25, and John 13, and only focused on a checklist of what not to do as our standard for Christian faith.
Which means we end up with a whole lot of people like Gladys in the world, who confess, “I love Jesus, but (blank) – I drink a little, I smoke, I cuss, I mess up.” That’s a hard place to be in. It’s hard to look in the mirror of faith and say to yourself, “I love Christ, but I do this or that so that must mean I am not a real Christian.” So we feel outside the church and distant from God.
When statements like that emerge in counseling sessions, I’ll often ask the person “Whom do you hear speaking those words of disapproval to you?” Who is saying, “You have no worth in God’s eyes because you drink, you smoke, you’re not successful, you’re not morally pure and perfect”? Sometimes they’ll tell me that they learned this lesson in church or read it somewhere in the bible. Now friends, I love y’all but, bless your hearts, you don’t listen to 90% of what is said in church or really know everything that’s in the bible. More than likely it wasn’t the church that told you “don’t do this” or “don’t do that.” It likely wasn’t the church that said, “Stop doing that or you’ll go blind” – it was more than likely some kid on the playground or a very misguided camp counselor or your crazy aunt Zelda. And even if by chance you did hear something like that from the pulpit, the bottom line is that most, if not all of humanity, exists on the wrong side of that moral equation – smoking, drinking, cussing, cavorting, lying, full of shame for what they’ve done or fearful that the world will know the truth about them and know they’re not good Christians.
Let’s be honest: there are some things you can do that undermine whether or not you truly love Jesus. To say, “I love Jesus, but I hate (blank) – I hate the Irish or Turks or immigrants or Jews or Muslims” – are contradictory statements. To claim to love Jesus but to be guided by passions that are abusive, violent, or wish the destruction of others, those two phrases cannot be logically combined. But that’s an extreme case. What about the vast majority of us who seek to be faithful, but at times feel unworthy to be called Christian for a variety of reasons?
The short answer is this: None of us are outside the care or love of God. Neither Gladys nor you or I need see ourselves as we are reflected in the world’s moralistic eyes. Our self-examination and life of faith always begins by seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of Christ. In that loving glance from our Savior, we need not be hesitant or pull back from a life of faith because of our failings. More importantly, in that loving glance of Christ’s, we know what we are to do and how we are to live wherever the journey of life takes us and we know that we won’t be alone. Then Gladys’ phrase is changed. It now becomes, “I love Jesus, and…”
Will you please move back to Racine.