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Confessions of a Christ Follower: Part 2 Legalism

I waved to David as he walked to his car, then slid my hands into my pockets as I watched him pull out and drive away. I stared out into the street, cars drifting by in the slow night. I wandered to my car and wrapped my scarf around my neck as I adjusted myself in the seat and drove home.


I miss community. I miss God being in my daily life. I think maybe that is what community is really for. We can read our Bibles, pray, go to church on Sunday, but I think Christianity is an interactive faith, it’s a faith of many parts and each of us is one of these small, yet integral pieces. Somehow, in the right stages, we just fit together, we feel each other's struggles and there are the right encouraging words, the right scriptures and the right late night conversations that let us see Christ between ourselves and the people in our faith oriented community. I think, though, it takes more than knowing the rules or just showing up on Sunday to be a part of that.

I don't believe the world can be strictly black and white, but I know a few believers who will tell you that it is. I don't mean to say there aren't 'rules' in our faith, guidelines for trying to live a Christ-like life, but a community isn't a court room. It’s not a place where the rules are posted on the wall like the Supreme Court. Fellowship is not hearing, “no” even before your butt hits the seat; it‘s listening, and comprehending where our friends are at in their lives and in their walk. I've been told I over-think things, that maybe God is easier than how I approach Him, but the only way I know how to come close to someone is to question. I over-think and I analyze because it’s how I can love. I've never fallen in love with a woman listening to her likes and dislikes, but I have after a disagreement, I have after a long, unnervingly vulnerable conversation about who we are, but not sitting at a fancy restaurant on a first date listening to all her accomplishments, intermingled with details of how great her cat is. A.W. Tozer said that we must know God by deep emotional intercourse. Rules and regulations are not emotional intercourse. At best I feel they are an outline of desire. They may tell us what is important, but I believe they can only outline the Heart which designed them. Yes, I think there are rules that we have to follow as believers, but the rules themselves are void of passion without understanding the Root which has created them.

“What would you do it you found a wallet on the street?” my professor asked, as I sat some years ago in my first religious studies course. She eyed us all, then pointed to a man in the back row. “You, what would you do if you found a wallet on the street with some money in it, maybe a few credit cards? A gold card, American express, the drivers license looks like to be a middle aged man.”

“Take it to the police, I guess,” he stammered out. She nodded, but still carried a feeling of apathy towards his answer. She pointed to the girl next to him.

“You. What would you do?”

“I guess the same, maybe take it to the address on the license, give it back.” She seemed more calm. The class looked about, realizing that she was running down the rows. We all began to think out our answers.

She did as we thought: one by one in a 100 person class, she asked us. Most said they would return it, a few brave ones said maybe they would keep the money; a few more said they weren’t sure. As she heard the last answer in the front right row, she paused for a moment, crossing her arms and panning her vision across the crowd of waiting students.

“You’re full of crap. Most of you anyway. You don’t know if you’d give it back, you just sputter that out because it‘s what you believe you should do; it‘s the ‘moral’ thing to do. At least the frat boy over there said he’d keep the money. The best we can say is, ‘I don’t know’,” she chastised us, and for some reason, I felt bad for saying what I thought was the right thing.

“You have no idea what situation you’d be in at that time; you don’t know what would be happening. Right action is in the moment; you’re stammering out your principals,” she said. A large man, probably in his 40’s, in the front row raised his hand. The professor looked over and nodded at him.

“It’s the right thing to do, and I know that it wouldn’t matter what the situation, I would return that wallet. I am a Christian and it’s what I’ve been taught to do,” he said confidently. She raised an eyebrow at him and walked over.

“Even if you were homeless and hungry you’d return it?” she asked him. He smirked a bit, then answered.

“I would; it’s what the church teaches us to do and so I would do it.” He leaned back in his chair; I could smell the arrogance from the other side of the room. I had just recently left the church, but I still felt a sting of embarrassment that this man used to represent my faith in that classroom. The professor stood looking at him, allowing the tension to build between them.

“Do you have a kid?” she asked him.

“Yeah, a five year old. Why?”

“So you’d be homeless with your kid. You would return that money, every dollar, when you have a child with you who needs to eat?” She didn’t smile, she didn’t taunt, she just wanted to dig into him, she wanted him to understand. He sat forward, eyeing her.

“I would. If you do the right thing, do what the Bible says to do, then God will provide! Taking that wallet would be stealing. If my son needed to eat, God would provide,” he blurted out, just under a shout. She wasn’t fazed.

“How do you know that wasn’t God giving you food? You think you’d be walking along and find a five star meal waiting on a candle lit table behind an ally waiting for you and your child? You think you know how God works? I don’t think you can fathom the plans of something so much greater than you,” she retorted. He sat there silently for a moment, looking at the ground.

“He would provide. You follow the Law and He blesses,” he said sternly, just above a whisper. “Do what the Bible says. That’s the way it works.”

Her face softened a bit, her brow furrowed and she sighed, shaking her head, as she walked back to the center of the class to begin the lecture.

I looked at him, his arms crossed, his demeanor spiked and defensive. Was it the greater sin to take the wallet, or let his son starve for the sake of pride in principal? Would God provide otherwise in that situation? Was that Him providing? I don’t know, I think it would be harder to know in the moment, but I think maybe she was right, maybe that is the right answer: I don’t know.

I didn’t recount this to say that we should take a wallet if we find it in the middle of the street, but rather to examine the Lawmaker through the Law. I think perhaps the laws and the rules are there for the sake of right action, and right thought, but I don’t know if any law could always be true; I don’t know if the same compassion Christ showed us is in that. It would seem ridiculous to pause at a stop sign in an empty intersection if there was a tsunami coming, and I don’t think I could let my child starve if there was a way to feed him (if I had a child). I often wonder if, perhaps, we don’t give God enough credit, enough room to be God. I wonder if we box Him in with what we know, not letting Him out to work through us because we’re afraid of the uncertainty of real relationship. It makes me think that we’re living as though Christ never came, never gave us freedom from the Law, didn’t give us the ability to pull a donkey out of a ditch on the Sabbath, or even another human being for that matter. What if God is bigger than we think He is? I don’t mean that it’s about not following the laws of faith, and I don’t mean to say that it’s not about not following the laws of our faith. It’s C.S. Lewis’ moral law, the inner pulling that begs us to do one thing when we feel another, it‘s being brave enough to pose a question and whole heartedly searching for an answer. It‘s being in ever-growing intimate relationship.

I once asked my friend, Jonathan Keck, if he thought that maybe God was in fact so great and so encapsulating that He may actually contradict Himself, as we only so insignificant and limited human beings could understand contradiction to be. That God is all Love, but just as much all Justice and somehow there is an incomprehensible balance there which we could never really understand. Jonathan said he thought this was probably true, but the real and hard part is finding a way to translate that reality into our daily lives, finding a way to truly live like Godly men and women in that uncertain area of grey. Maybe that is where, for some of us, relationship starts...

Confessions of a Christ Follower: Part 1

I sat across from David. We meet every week to talk about life and God and music. It was dark outside and the once hot coffee I held in my hand had grown cold. I made small imaginary rings in the table by pressing the bottom of the paper cup into the table and tracing its edge in a circle.

“So do you like where you’re at?” he asked me, adjusting his glasses. I looked up and shrugged.

“I don’t know, Dave. I really don’t know about anything anymore. I think I miss the idea of home,” I told him, picking up the cardboard ring around my cup and letting it fall back to the table. He nodded and skewed his face in thought.

“Having trouble finding community?” he asked again. I looked up at him, then leaned back in my chair and gazed out the window behind him into the dark parking lot outside the coffee shop.

“I don’t think I have one. Not really, I wish I did. I mean, I think a community is supposed to be believers that you are growing with, and I don’t feel like I’m really growing with anyone. I just kind of feel like I’m floating about in the purgatory of faith,” I sighed, returning to lean on the table.

“So what’s the problem then?” He tilted his head and let his weight fall on his elbow perched on the edge of the table. I grabbed my cup and began to make more imaginary circles.

“It just feels like there is this divide. A few divides. I mean, I feel like there are the legalists who have no sense of compassion, that it’s all just black and white, and then you have those anomial Christians who are just apathetic. You know the kind: they just come to church on Sunday, sing a couple hymns, glaze over during the sermon and then carry on about their lives like they left Christ back in the sanctuary,” I said. I sighed, pausing for a moment before continuing. “Then there are the denominational lines. Since I’m not this or that, it‘s hard to find ‘home’. When you spend enough time talking to different people of different denominations, all you see is finger pointing and slander: bleeding heart liberal this, tyrant conservative that. I hate it. It’s like everyone forgot why we are where we are. It‘s like we can’t see past a few differences to get to the heart of the matter.”

Dave nodded, his mouth parting as he searched for words. “I wonder if we could ever get past all that. You know, be the ecumenical body of Christ. I realize there are a ton of denominations but I wonder if it‘s possible to even cut that down, cross those lines.”

“That would be my dream come true, Dave,” I replied. “If we could see past such small things in comparison to what the reality of Christ is, it would make us so much stronger. But I feel like I’ve lost hope in humanity, in organized Christianity. People idolize their denominations, their rules, or possibly worse, they just don’t care. They don’t care about growing. They pray and go to Sunday service like it was taking out the trash or folding laundry.” I sunk my face down into my arms, letting my chin sit on my forearms, looking back out into the darkness.

“It’s tough,” said Dave, grimacing. I nodded into my elbows, sliding the weight of my face to one hand.

“It is. I wonder, sometimes, if maybe it’s worth thinking. I wonder if it‘s worth asking questions. It’s so lonely, I feel like there is no home,” I sighed. I felt lonely and lost.

When I became a Christian, I didn’t want to follow the denominational lines. Christ didn’t find me in a church, or in The Book of Common Prayer or on some TBN special. He found me when I cried out for help. He didn’t come as a conservative, or a liberal. He didn’t come as a Lutheran or an Evangelical; He just came as my Savior. Somehow, it feels like that has gotten lost in the world. We argue about our rules, our leadership, we argue about interpretation, and we throw around the word “heresy” as if it were pennies into a well. Heresy - millions across history have been tortured and murdered because of that word, millions. We play with it like a pellet gun.

My friend, Big John used to live in France. He told me that it was rare to run into a Christian of any kind there. So many people had left their faith, letting it decay and rot away like a leather bound book, centuries old, on a shelf. He said that with the few Christians you could find, of any denomination, they would greet each other with such great smiles. They would hug you, invite you in, you’d go to church together and share in fellowship, and the details were pushed away. I wonder if it is only in desperation that we could cross those lines, that we could truly meet and love one another.

When I was in high school, I met a man who had snuck Bibles into China. I asked him who he brought them to. He said to Chinese Christians. I asked him why. He said because they were persecuted there and they didn’t have Bibles. He didn’t bring them to Methodists or Salvationists; he just brought them to Christians. He brought them the Word of God because they longed for it; they wanted to sit together in their darkened rooms, huddled close, talking about their faith, praying and being fed. I don’t know if they even cared what denomination was. I wonder if it would take the threat of death for us to say that we would all see each other in Heaven like those Christians...