Sacred Space

I had the opportunity to share my heart with a small group of people last night. I got to talk about what I dream of when I think about a church that is a sacred space to gather and seek God together. Here are the words I spoke:

What I remember most about going to church, as a child, is the preparation. I remember my mom putting sponge rollers in my hair the night before and how uncomfortable they were to sleep on, but how much I loved the curls in my hair the next morning. I remember always wearing a dress to church, it wasn’t a question of whether pants were allowed or not, it was just what was. And I was okay with it most of the time, except when I also had to wear wool tights under my dress to keep my legs warm. They were incredibly uncomfortable and always sagged in the most unpleasant way. I remember my 3 brothers putting on dress slacks and dress shirts, and that sometimes they also wore a tie and jacket. My dad never showed up to church without wearing a full suit. As a girlie girl, and as a child, I didn’t question these routines, I liked dressing up. I liked people telling me I looked pretty. I didn’t question the idea that we need to make ourselves look a certain way in order to be acceptable at church. I couldn’t have known that those simple acts were my first lessons in how to make yourself presentable to God.

I also remember that all of that extra effort took extra time and, with 4 kids, we were often running late. My parents had a very rocky relationship and the stress of Sunday mornings added fuel to the fire. My dad always wanted to be early- but he didn’t actually help get any of us ready. My mom did all of the care taking when it came to us kids so she was often frazzled and running behind and spent the last few minutes getting herself ready to go. My dad would sit in the car and honk the horn at her. Then they would argue on the way to church. I hated that conflict. But when we got there, when we stepped out of the car, we all put on our smiles. And so did everyone else. I didn’t think about how I was being taught that our mess wasn’t really welcome at church.

I enjoyed church most of the time. I enjoyed seeing my friends. I liked the older women and men who had fun teasing us and chatting with us. I liked being chosen to light the candles at the beginning of the service. I enjoyed the refreshments in the reception hall. I liked my Sunday School teachers, especially one I had in the 1^st or 2^nd grade. She was beautiful and she always wore lots of bright red shiny lipstick. I was mesmerized by her lips while she told us stories from the Bible. Sometimes sitting on the hard pews during the service was boring, but overall, it was ok.

I remember that sometimes we were naughty at church and that the consequences for that were usually much more severe than if we were naughty at home. My dad would put his thumb in the soft part of our shoulder and squeeze it while correcting us with a quiet and frightening whisper. And, if the infraction was bad enough, we would receive a spanking with his belt when we got home. Church was not a place to misbehave or embarrass my parents. We needed to prove to the other church people that they were good parents. Good parents have children who are good too.

In high school and college, I started taking an active part in helping to lead the activities at church. I was fully committed and bought in. It was all I’d ever known, and church was the beginning of where I found God, so I was passionate about being a part. I started owning my own desire to know more of God and I sought people who were further along in their faith than me. I participated in youth group, Bible studies, and, in college, I joined a campus ministry called the Navigators. I was an eager learner and loved the community of learning with a group of people who believed like I did.

I am grateful for so much about all those years and experiences- they are the foundation of what my faith is today. I am grateful for the Navigators for many reason-  but the best reason is that that is where I met Jason. I am grateful for the friendships I made- faith is meant to be lived out together. I am grateful for the elderly people who made me feel welcome, seen, and special as a small child at church. I am grateful for the leaders of my youth groups, Bible studies, and the Navigators- they were passionate about sharing their faith with those they led and I learned so much. I’m grateful that, even though it wasn’t always very pretty, my parents made the effort to get us to church every Sunday.

I couldn’t have known, as a child, or even as a teen and young adult, that in the midst of all the truth I was learning, I was also learning things about God that were not true. I was being taught that only the fixed up should show up. Only those who fit in the box are welcome. If you play by the rules you’ll fit in just fine, if you don’t, or can’t, you might not feel welcome or comfortable. You might even be called out and maybe even asked to not come back.

Sometimes life hands us situations and events that unravel our previous understanding of the world. In 2006, 10 years into our marriage, through a story I’d love to share with you on another day, Jason and I decided to adopt 2 children from Haiti. The clarity we had from God that this was something we were called to do, was absolutely unmistakable to us. On our 10^th anniversary we accepted a referral for Moniqua and John and started an 18 month wait to bring them home that was absolutely agonizing. They were 3 and 7 when we said yes to them. We thought we’d have them home in 4-6 months. They were 5 and 9 when they finally came home. The place they lived in Haiti was not a safe place. They were often hungry, sick, malnourished, and they were not always safe there. We watched and waited from afar knowing that we couldn’t protect them and that we were powerless to speed up the process. It was in the hands of the Haitian government.

On February 9, 2008 they finally came home. We were ecstatic. Watching them experience snow for the first time, taste foods they’d never heard of before, play with all the toys their hearts could desire, enjoy new friendships with their 3 new siblings- it was all a rush. It was fun and endearing and all the things you’d imagine it to be. But underneath all of that joy was pain that could not be ignored forever.

The next few years were really hard- and not just for us as their parents- for them too. Moniqua and John were brought here against what they would have chosen- being kept by their birth mom and dad. They had no reason to believe that our family and home would be any safer than the orphanage they had come from. They had no idea of permanence or abundance, of provision or safety. Their experience up to that point had taught them that food would not always be there, safety was not guaranteed, people could not be trusted. Children do not have words for these experiences and fears. They cannot have a conversation about this out loud. Instead, they express their pain through their behavior. That is not wrong, it is just how it works. In fact, we do this as adults too.

I had read many books about kids who have experienced trauma. I knew all the theories about attachment and how much broken attachments with birth mom can affect children. We had attended trainings and conferences and did our best to prepare ourselves. We had so much knowledge. What I could not have known until I was in the midst of it was how I would feel about it. I didn’t know how bad I’d be at handling it. I didn’t know that I would get so angry or take their behaviors so personally. I didn’t know that I would feel so much grief that adjustment wasn’t just easy, that my efforts didn’t feel like enough. I couldn’t have possibly imagined the guilt I would feel in what a failure I felt I was as their mom. I was consumed by myself and the pain of my experience.

During that hardest season of our lives, I kept showing up to church, hoping for answers and relief from the hard, and I started seeing what I hadn’t needed to see before- what I couldn’t previously recognize as unhealthy. I started experiencing the discomfort that people display when you bring your ugly truth into the church building. Everyone there was working so hard to do what they’d always been taught to do- show up with a smile, hide the pain of the fight you had on the way there, conceal the pain you feel about your broken marriage, disguise the details of your teen’s absence who is rebelling and has refused to come anymore, don’t let anyone know that your 8-year-old son is begging to be a girl. Keep all the unacceptable things hidden.

Well, I am an outward processor. I am transparent to a fault. And so I shared too much. I learned over the first few years that they were home that the church was not a safe place for me to take my pain. And I really needed it to be. If I shared with the wrong people (who I had previously believed to be the right people) I would be told that I needed to pray more, that I needed to stop complaining and be grateful, that I wasn’t trusting God enough. I learned that people were much more comfortable if I didn’t talk about it, if I pretended like everything was okay.

I couldn’t do that. I was too desperate to find help.

Thankfully I found support online with a group of women who had also adopted older children who were struggling and hurting like I was. I took a leap of faith and flew to Orlando to meet all of these strangers, who Jason feared might actually be serial rapists and killers, and I spent 4 days experiencing the most sacred space I had ever had in my life. These women- they were not a Bible study. They weren’t a small group. They weren’t a church committee. Some of them don’t believe in God, some of them used to go to church but left when the disillusionment became greater than the benefit, some of them were very conservative in their faith and some were very liberal. ALL of them embraced me right where I was. ALL of them listened to my story and met me there and not one of them diminished my pain or my experience with a Christian platitude. ALL of them were and still are my church.

18 years ago, when we were brand new parents to just one child, we moved to Colorado and started attending the church where my husband is now employed. Our second weekend there I met my friend Nicole and her husband Jessie there. Nicole and I have twice been pregnant at the same time. We each have 5 kids. We have potty trained our toddlers in her backyard. We have celebrated holidays and birthdays together. We have spent family weekends in the mountains together. We have done life together. We have wept together over disappointments and fears. We have laughed till we cried at the embarrassing and funny things our kids have done and said. Nicole knows more of my thoughts, my passions, my fears and my ugly than any other friend. And she has stayed. She has listened. She has accepted me right where I’m at. Nicole is my church.

Jason and I and our family found a small group of friends a few years ago who we connected with and felt safe with and who we started meeting with several times a year. Our time together was mostly spent around a meal and some wine or cocktails. We didn’t have an agenda. We just all really enjoyed being together and we found that our conversation would naturally turn to our faith. We still get together regularly and our conversations are filled with life-giving stories and with our doubts. We share where we are failing and what we are hoping for. We find many reasons to laugh together, and sometimes we play Cards Against Humanity. Our kids are a variety of ages and test the limits in a multitude of ways- and it’s okay if we all know that. We’re well aware that our kids are going to make mistakes and so are theirs. These people are my church.

A few years ago, after agonizing for several years over attending church regularly as I had always been taught to do, Jason and I decided together that it was not healthy for me to attend Sunday services anymore. I stopped going to the church. I stopped doing something that I had done every weekend of my life since 9 months before I was born. I realized that what I needed and longed for in church was not a place where we put our pretty on to show up. I needed relationships with safe people. And I needed to know that anyone who I might want to bring to church would feel safe there as well. It was time for me to let go of the idea that attending an event on Sunday morning constituted church and was required to be a ‘good Christian.’ I decided to focus on the church I was finding outside of the church building. And I started to dig deep inside of myself and look for the untrue things the Church taught me so I could redefine my faith based on truths that would be new to me.

Throughout the past few years I have struggled to figure out why what I was taught as a child does not work for me today. I have grieved the loss of what felt was easy about my faith before and railed at God about why it’s so hard now. At one point I questioned whether I believed anymore at all. But here’s the thing: in spite of the imperfection of the church and the pain I experienced at the hands of those who should have been a safe place to come and in spite of my own misunderstand of so much about faith, I haven’t been able to let it go. I believe, deep inside of me, and with a passion that I can’t shake, that God exists. And I believe that God loves us. I believe that God knew we would get sidetracked by our humanity, but that He intended for us to seek Him together anyway because the gift of vulnerability in community is a miraculous opportunity to experience grace, love, forgiveness and hope. 

At some point, the church got mixed up and it took a book that is filled to the brim with broken, sinful people and used it to teach its members that we can’t be like those people. We have to be people who represent the perfection we hope for in eternity. Problem is, we haven’t been relieved of our humanity so we aren’t capable of what is being asked of us. At some point the teachings of the church somehow became a guidebook for being perfect like Jesus- except we aren’t. Hypocrisy doesn’t come from being sinful. Hypocrisy comes from telling people they aren’t good enough if they are sinful. Hypocrisy is telling people they aren’t acceptable to God because they aren’t like us. Hypocrisy is a disease that is eating away at the validity of the message that Jesus brought us. We lose our voice to those who don’t know God when we tell them they have to clean up their act and put on their Sunday best to come to Sunday School, because even though we do those things, and in spite of how hard we try to cover up our ugly, it has a crazy way of getting out anyway. We’re exposed as people who asked more of everyone than any of us have to give.

Our desire to present as perfect diminishes the truth and magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross. Who are we to claim or present as people who need God less than others? At what point did the teachings of the church shift from a focus on the awesome gift of relationship with God thru Christ, to the idea that we are supposed to be so good we don’t need Christ?

And so, here I am with all of you and I’m telling you that I’m looking for a sacred space to do church with a group of people who aren’t afraid to show up real and broken and messy. I’m looking for people who can handle my reality and who will risk telling me theirs. I’ll even go first.

I used to read my Bible regularly, but in all of this crazy growth and transition, I stopped believing that it was literal and, while I still hold it with reverence and awe, I’m not quite sure how to use it right now so I didn’t even include a single verse in this talk. I am really insecure about my body and how I look and sometimes I stand in my closet for long periods of time trying to find something to wear that will make me feel acceptable to the world. I judge people and think that if they would do things my way they’d be better off. I have some grudges that I’m holding against people who’ve hurt me and, even though I know I’d be better off if I forgave them, I haven’t done that yet. Sometimes I cuss my kids out when I get angry. I shouldn’t do that, and I’m working on it, but it’s a truth about me you should know if we’re going to do true church together. I am passionate. I love to laugh. I fight hard for things I believe in. I feel driven to be a part of showing the world a God who loves beyond comprehension. I am loyal. I am in process.

So what is Sacred Space to me?

The word Sacred speaks to a devotion and dedication to God. When I hear the word I think of something beautiful, peaceful, set aside for pointing us to God. The idea of gathering with people to seek God doesn’t make the meeting sacred, sacred describes a focus on God, not a focus on our efforts to seek God. The word Space can be defined many ways, depending on the context. One definition is ‘the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have a relative position and direction.’ For me, Sacred Space, is about gathering together in a place and time that is positioned to direct us to seeking God. I don’t know exactly what that will look like, but I can get excited about trying to find out.

I remember a teacher telling me one time that the best way to get students to behave is not to tell them what they can’t do. The most successful plan is to tell them what they should do. Give them positive instructions. I believe the same applies to our faith. I don’t believe that we’re meant to just accept where we’re at and never grow beyond the hard in our life. I wonder if we come together as whole human beings who spend our time together seeking an infinite and loving God, if maybe the messes will sort themselves out. We’ll become stronger in places where we used to be weak. We’ll grow out of bad habits and lean on each other’s wisdom as we focus more on learning together. And our primary focus will be on a loving God who doesn’t expect us to put on our Sunday best and smile in order to show up.

Is God Punishing Us?

Tonight, while driving home from her basketball game, Anna looked out at the first snow of the season and asked me if God brings natural disasters because of our sin. I asked her to explain her question further. She wanted to know if things like blizzards and tornadoes and earthquakes happen because God is punishing us for our sin.

This is not the gospel message I want my daughter to know or believe.

One of the questions that pervades my thoughts most often is one I don't believe will be answered in my lifetime. Why does God allow the horrific? Why was there not another way? I've read the books. I hear what wise authors say. "The hard shows God's glory. The hard causes us to recognize our need for God. God is God and I am not."

If God is God, then couldn't They have found another path for glorifying Themself? If God wants us to need Them, and They are all-powerful and all-knowing, couldn't They have created beings who recognize their need for Them without all the suffering? Is God too small, too powerless to have done it differently?

I don't get it.

And I don't have an answer for that question...

...but I am convinced that all living things on earth have a life cycle - birth, life, death. That cycle always includes the creation of life, the birth, the living, and the dying. In the forest, when lightening strikes the dry brittle branches of a dead tree and ignites a fire, that fire often burns up healthy, living trees and plants as well. It takes the lives of thriving animals and the homes of birds. It also, by the way, kills diseases that, left unchecked, can run rampant wipe out an entire forest. When it burns out, what is left looks like utter destruction, but when the rain comes again, the grass starts to poke up through the ash. Young trees spring up. Animals begin to find lush and fertile fields of grass and foliage to live on. Birds come back to the area and build new nests. The disease is wiped out and the cycle begins again.

I don't know why this is the way of life, but even God modeled it through Jesus Christ. God knew that the eternal answer to death was a dying and rising again. This truth doesn't explain away the horrors that are taking place in our world today. It doesn't mean we shouldn't grieve when life is lost. It doesn't call us to avert our eyes when we witness suffering or abuse for which we have the ability to stop. We aren't called to give up. Even plants and animals have an innate striving for survival. The drive inside of us to avoid pain and death is from God too. Jesus begged his Father to not have to go thru the dying, but he knew the dying was required to get to the living.

In the course of a lifetime, the recognition of and submission to the lessons of the cycle come through experiencing the cycle. We don't get the option of avoiding pain and death. They come for all of us. We can respond by believing we are being punished, or we can look for the wisdom of our Creator. What do They want us to learn? We can respond with fear or lean into Love.  Reconciling the truth of something is very different from acknowledging the emotions of each stage of living. Leaning into the lessons does not explain the why of how things play out in each circumstance. We may understand the overall cycle, without understanding the why of the individual cycles that take place in each of our lives. Fear may be the right and unavoidable response in the moment of a terrifying accident or assault, but afterwords, as we process, time allows us to seek Love over fear in how we learn from the story. Seeking love builds the muscles of courage, wisdom, presence and trust.

It is my desire to turn my kids (and myself) back to Love over fear when they ask me questions about the hard. Love grows life and courage and truth in our souls. Fear grows anger, cowardice and a death to freedom. I do not and cannot comprehend the why of so much of what happens in our world, but I know without a doubt that God has met me in the hard and has shown me how to receive Love and how to give it too.

I wonder if my kids will soon be asking me if God has turned Their back on the country we live in. It appears that fear is ruling the day. I easily fall prey to the fear and find myself wallowing in anger and judgement. If I can remember and trust the cycle, can I believe that the fire burning here and now may be purging us of the disease that would ultimately wipe us all out? The fire could even turn back on itself and not harm all that we fear it might. Is the pain right now necessary because it is causing the Love and Truth in our spirits to awaken and fight for the Life we innately long for and were created to experience? As we witness what feels like death to much of what we know, can we use the drive inside of us to fight for the Life that is on the other side? Can we be a shelter for the defenseless and pour out a healing rain on what looks like destruction? Can we look for where new Life is springing up out of the dying and marvel at how God's plan cannot be destroyed by what feels far bigger than we can combat?

I will keep getting distracted by the size and intense heat of the flames, for they are daunting, but I'm committed to not getting stuck there. The fear may well show us real danger that we should avoid, but the light of the flames is also illuminating where the Life is and I am drawn there. Life will win in the end, but dying is still part of the cycle. I may have to die to some of what is comfortable for me as the flames burn some of my temporary hopes into ashes, but there is a richer Life to be found after the destruction and what is burning up will feed the soil of hope and Love.

This answer is far more detailed than Anna was looking for (and I didn't burden her with all of it). To simplify it: Do I think God is punishing us? No. Do I understand then 'why' bad things happen? No. Do I see how Life is born out of death? Yes, I do. I don't get it, and I don't always like it, but I have certainly experienced the richness of being forever changed by seeking the Love after the dying. I have most certainly found Life, and that more abundantly, through the cycles of dying and being reborn each time to a deeper understanding of my Creator's Love.

Love does not need a Christian government to spread it's gospel message.

I have had a nagging feeling in my gut during the past few months that Christians are somehow missing the mark when fighting to protect their beliefs as rights through our government. I haven't quite been able to put my finger on what it is. I couldn't find clarity on what I was feeling until some things started to become very clear in the divisive talk and actions that flooded the last few weeks of this election.

People interpret scripture differently. I don't think there are two people on the planet who would find they have the exact same views on every verse in the Bible. We are unique and we have our own minds and experiences that shape our perceptions and understanding.

I believe that part of being separated from God is the confusion we experience because we are limited by our humanness from being able to fully experience or understand who God is. We don't like to feel confused. Confusion leads to fear that we're missing something. Fear makes us feel out of control. Too often in the church we decide to make certain unknowns 'known' by defining rules and understanding around things that God never intended us to get so wrapped up in.

I remember visiting my dad's side of the family when I was growing up and sitting with them at the dinner table while the adults would debate the topic of The Tribulation. The Tribulation is an idea that, in the end times, Christians will be heavily persecuted for their faith. Some people believe that God will snatch up all of the current Christians into heaven before The Tribulation begins and that because of that miraculous world event, many people will come to believe in God but will have to go through this horrific time of being abused, discriminated against, having no rights, and even being murdered, before God finally relents and wipes out all evil. Other people believe that Christians will not be rescued from The Tribulation, and still others think that maybe there is an answer somewhere in the middle. Of course, some believers don't believe in the idea of The Tribulation at all.

It was interesting to hear my dad and his siblings debate this topic. Some of them felt very strongly about their opinions and presented them as fact, others talked about teachers of the Bible who present reasons why it is actually wrong to believe anything but the conclusion they had come to. Some of them just weren't sure about the whole thing.

Who was right and who was wrong? Can any one of them prove in the world today what they thought they understood so clearly in the Scriptures? Is there really a black and white answer? Not feeling certain about something can leave us feeling too exposed and vulnerable. Our human tendency is to try to create peace and harmony in our souls by clarifying the unknown so that we don't feel afraid. Sometimes what we define as a 'known' for us, is not a 'known' for others. Sometimes we are taught our parents' 'knowns' and we grow up believing things to be certain having no idea that other people are not so certain. It is a strange thing, as a young adult, to suddenly realize that something you had no question about, is not that easy or clear for someone else.

Throughout history entire denominations and church affiliations have made decisions about what their black and white 'knowns' will be. They write value statements and membership agreements that clearly state what their beliefs are and the expectations they have for all who join their churches to believe in and abide by these 'knowns.' People feel safe when they surround themselves with others who all agree to be about the same things. People feel like the decisions they've made about what they 'know' to be true are validated when they join a church that has the same 'knowns.'

What, at first feels like inclusion and security inside of a group of believers who think like we think, can slowly fade into a club of exclusion, insecurity, and fear. This happens when we start to find more security in knowing that we know something, than the security we should be finding in knowing that all of us are loved by God and that God's truth cannot be undone by others who don't agree with us. When we start holding our beliefs as more sacred and more important than God's love for everyone, we begin to believe that we must make everyone believe and behave like we do. We forget that what was once a decision we made to define something a certain way might actually not be the only right way to define something. We feel threatened, defensive, and fearful when someone disagrees with us because we really liked the feeling we had in our gut that we had something all figured out and we didn't have to wonder about it anymore.

Churches can become places where people begin to police behaviors and beliefs so that the group as a whole conforms to the shared 'knowns' and everyone feels validated that they are doing it right. Church was intended to be a place of love and service and inclusion. It was never intended to be a place of required conformity. When behaviors become valued above all else, those who don't fall in line suddenly find themselves excluded from the group. They find themselves alone, isolated, feeling unloved and unworthy. Worst of all, they find themselves unwelcome in the Church. This is not the example I see from Jesus in the New Testament. I see a man who spent his ministry breaking down the 'knowns' and rebuking those who held the 'knowns' so sacred. I see a man who sought out those who didn't conform to the rules and embracing them and telling them they were loved by Truth Itself. I see a man who gave his life for ALL, including ALL who didn't look like, sound like, dress like, believe like, or worship like he did.

Please don't hear me say that I don't think there aren't any absolutes. I just don't think any of us should get so certain in our thinking that we think we are the ones who've figured out exactly what those absolutes are and everyone else deserves to be marginalized until they fall into line. If you have chosen faith in God stay humble enough to remember that you might not have it all right. You might not truly 'know' all the truths. And even if you do know something that really is true, remember that the highest commandment that God gave was to love God and to love others. Love comes first.

Christians in America have gotten so wrapped up in the sacredness of their 'knowns' that they have come to believe it is their duty to force compliance on everyone through our government. They truly believe that they are doing this for the best and good of all, but because they are making these laws based, ultimately, out of the fear that drove them to the absolutes they have claimed, they fear everyone who doesn't believe or behave the way they do. This fear leads them to know that first, they must be able to protect their rights so they must be free to own the weapons they will need if the majority decides to go against their 'knowns.' Jesus did not model this. He did not assume he needed to be able to defend himself. He also never said we shouldn't own weapons, but when his day came to face those who didn't believe as he did, he did not call for all around him to take up weapons and defend him. He remained humble and calm. He leaned into love and not fear. He sacrificed the desire to force everyone to understand his truth in the moment for the eternal impact he could have by sacrificing himself in Love instead.

Christians have also chosen the 'knowns' that feel the most affirming to their way of life and they band together to make those 'knowns' required for all. They believe that if everyone will just comply because they are forced to, then everyone will be better people. They forget that compliance doesn't create believers. Compliance doesn't offer salvation. And, compliance will never happen across the board. We were created individually and have lived unique experiences because God, in infinite wisdom and creativity, knows that God's glory can only be revealed in the infinite variety of life and love that is displayed throughout the world. And, every single person is imperfect so we will all mess up, choose selfishness, forget to love well and decide to live out of fear rather than love far more often than we should.

When Christians decide to police things they can't ultimately control, and then decide to alienate and shut out those who don't submit to the rules, they create battles that cannot be won. Change that matters does not happen with lots of rules that say 'don't.' Change happens when individuals say 'how can I help?' Outlawing abortion doesn't stop abortions from happening. Finding out why abortions are happening and finding ways to help women so that abortions are not needed stops abortions from happening. Telling people not to have sex before marriage doesn't keep that from happening either. Showing each individual their worth as a whole person who is loved and valued and who is more than their bodies, helps them to make wise decisions about what is best for them instead of making decisions out of desperation for connection that ends up being about nothing more than instant gratification. Assuming that people who worship a faith other than Christianity are evil doesn't make them evil, nor does it make them interested in learning about our faith. Calling someone evil because they don't think they way we do is something evil we do to others.

We discredit our faith when we believe we need to force compliance but teach a message of grace. We make our faith something to be feared and distrusted when we fear and distrust everyone who does not share our faith. We build walls that exclude and are founded in fear when we think that behaviors indicate the conditions of people's hearts and that we are charged with the responsibility to change those behaviors without first caring for those hearts.

Love meets people where they are.
Love listens to people's stories.
Love is curious and asks questions.
Love assumes the best of people and their intentions.
Love looks for common ground.
Love trusts God with outcomes.
Love values people and relationships.
Love seeks to follow Jesus' example.
Love includes everyone.
Love does not seek to defend itself at the cost of others.
Love does not need for everyone to look at behave one certain way.
Love does not need a Christian government to spread it's gospel message.

It takes a lot of selflessness to love well. It takes a different kind of love and energy to decide to seek to bring change through loving people in the mess of relationship over attempting to force their compliance through laws and legalism. Trying to force an entire nation to comply to the 'knowns' of a few (who might not have it all right) does not create unity or love. It does not bring about the desired outcome. In fact, it only serves to create more divisiveness, more fear, more broken relationships. Being a part of the side that perpetuates so much fear and judges so harshly just doesn't sound to me like being a part of the side that Jesus is on.