Dear Evangelicals in America,
I've seen what's been going on there lately.
Actually, I've been watching you all along and I felt I needed to reach out because somewhere along the way, something seems to have been lost in translation:
This isn't what I had planned.
This wasn't the Church I set the table for two thousand year ago.
It wasn't the dream I had for you when I spoke in parables about the Kingdom.
It was all supposed to be so very different.
You were supposed to be different.
You were supposed to be a pervasive, beautiful "yeast in the dough" that permeated the planet; an unstoppable movement of compassion and mercy spread person-to-person.
You were supposed to extend a personal invitation to belonging and vitality that people could freely choose, not something oppressive mandated for them by government or law or brute force.
You were supposed to be that smallest, seemingly most insignificant of seeds, exploding steadily and gloriously over time with the realized potential of my sacred presence, becoming a place of safety and shelter for all people.
You were supposed to be delivering something so very precious; such an obvious, invaluable treasure, that it would make all those who discovered and experienced it feel like it was worth selling everything they had to hold onto it.
You were supposed my very body, here in yours, reflecting my heart, revealing my character.
You were designed to do this, to be this.
My kindness, my goodness, my forgiveness—you were created to be the method of transportation for it all.
You were made to personally deliver the greatest news to a world so desperate for it.
This wild, extravagant, world-altering love was intended to travel from my aching heart, through your trembling hands, and to my hurting people.
This has always been your calling. It has always been your purpose and this very second it still is.
My beloved, I have placed you here at this exact place and time in the history of creation, not to defend or protect me but simply to reflect me.
That has always been my most critical commandment and your most pressing obligation: loving God and loving others. I thought that I was clear on that when I was asked this long ago.
I showed you how to move in this world:
I kept company with priests and with prostitutes. I touched lepers and washed feet.I gladly dined with "sinners", both notorious and unknown. I lived humbly and open-handed. I was stingy with judgment and generous with grace. I served free meals to multitudes not because they earned or deserved it, but because they were hungry. I healed sick and suffering strangers, simply because they were hurting. I allowed myself to be slandered and beaten and murdered by those who accused me falsely—and I never claimed persecution. I warned the religious people never to desire power more than goodness.I told you that love trumps hate.
All that is happening these days, all your posturing and condemning and vitriol—does this really look like love to you?
All the grandstanding and insult-slinging and bullying, do you think that it feels like me?
Do you truly believe that the result of your labors here in these days is a Church that clearly perpetuates my character in the world?
Is this the good news that I entrusted you with—because to be honest with you I simply don't see it.
How have you so lost the plot?
How did you drift so far from the mission?
How did you become so angry, so combative, so petty, so arrogant, so entitled?
When did you begin writing your own script for this story?
When did you turn it into your story; about your glory, about you as the center, about your birthright or supremacy or national greatness?
My children, here's what you may not realize, as close as you are to all of this. You may not be able to see it clearly anymore, but I do:
You are driving people from me.
You have become an unbreachable barrier between myself and those who most need me.
You are leaving a legacy of damage and pain and isolation in your path—and doing it in my name.
You are testifying loudly, not to my love but to your preference and prejudice.
You are winning these violent little victories but you are losing human beings; not to hell or to sin or to the culture, but to all of the places they go to receive the decency and gentleness that you should be showing them.
This life is not about your right to refuse anyone blessing or kindness or care. If I wanted to avoid those I found moral faults with, I would have skipped the planet altogether.
I came here to heal and help. I came here to serve. I came here to show you what love looks like so that you could emulate it.
Your professed faith in me cannot be an escape clause to avoid emulating me.
Asserting your agenda was never more pressing than following my example.
Your religious liberty was never more important than loving the least in your midst.
Fear wasn't supposed to be your sole calling card as my people.
Your central cause in these moments, should be relentlessly conforming to my likeness, despite the inconvenience and discomfort that it brings.
When I commanded you to deny yourself, I was speaking about the times when it is most difficult to do so, because that is when "self" is the most distracting, the most dangerous, the most like an idol.
Obedience to me always comes with sacrifice to you, and I think you've forgotten that.
I can't force you to reflect upon these words.
I can't make you live as I lived or love as I love.
This was never the way I worked or will ever work. I will not coerce you into being anything.
I can only tell you that you have surely drifted from the course I started you on, and as often is the case in long journeys, it is a divergence that unfolds by the smallest of degrees, almost imperceptible while it's happening.
That is why what feels like victory to you right now is really another slight but definite movement away from me and from the reason you are really here at all.
To the Evangelicals in America and to those beyond who are still listening today; you would do well to hold my words up daily as a mirror to your individual lives, and to the expression of me that you make together in this place.
Is this what you see when you look at yourself?
Is this what the world sees when it looks at you?
In your all words and in all your ways, do they see me?
If not, then regardless of how it appears and feels to you—you haven't won anything.
May this be a truth that truly sets you free.
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