The other night I sat and prayed in my car.
God loves all people. Jesus died for all people. And this is what came to my mind when I was praying:
I am heart broken by all the mention in my old church communities of liberals, LGBTQ+ people, leftists and the secular world in all it’s brokenness. Of course there is brokenness there. Of course I hate some of the things these groups advocate for. I hate the slogan ‘Love is Love’ and it’s very limited scope of what love is. And I hate that some groups deem the denial of my same-sex attractions as inevitably leading me to depression or suicide. But at the same time...I kind of hate that a majority of churches only bark on about the brokenness of these groups. What about the sacrificial love the LGBTQ+ community show one another? What about the fact that all their protesting has actually earned me and many others the right to freely talk about our struggles...and even have the damned right to make mistakes without fear of death or persecution!
Why not talk about the corruption within the body of Christ? When Jesus taught in the temple, he barely talked about gentile sinfulness and almost completely honed in on pharisaic and Jewish groups being unrepentant.
This bias within churches is not evidence of wanting to speak the ‘truth in love’ it’s evidence of a deep rooted fear of these groups, if I’m honest. They are threatened by them and frankly it is because we haven’t built a deep enough well of love for them to deal with their frustrations.
Now I’m not saying that we should do a 360 and neglect discussing liberalism. It is completely relevant and necessary to learn how to deal with the culture of our time. I’m just saying how about some diversity in what we preach? How about some ‘your faith has made you well’ to those who haven’t lived ‘good’ lives but we can still recognise the good that they have done without fear we are ‘affirming’ all the rest of it? Or how about some mention to how tragic it is that parents have abandoned their children because of their conservative beliefs. Or even about how these conservative groups have been detrimentally abusive on a wider scale? How about some kind of rebuking for the church’s silence on this issue, and only talking about it when liberals start to raise a noise - and even then, only targeting the liberals! This isn’t good enough!
If we all fall short, then our teaching and preaching needs that diversity to give total deserved awe to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our words cannot stand without it. Want to talk about the sinfulness of liberal ideologies? Great! Talk about the conservatives too though. Want to talk about gentile sinfulness? Great! Talk about the sinfulness of believers too though! It is this hypocritical bias that I am heartbroken by and totally abhor. I cannot tell you how deeply it pains me, but I hope and pray that God will use all of us who want to do his will to bring that soothing elixir of change to this rift.