"Hi, what's your name? I'm better than you."

I have said before that my character is like Elizabeth Bennet's of Pride and Prejudice. In many ways this is a good thing--something to be proud of. But then, that pride itself is one of the points against me. You see, I am also like this character in that can be quick to judge at times.
What is it about me that makes me think I have the authority to judge anyone? Is it because I am a Christian? No! No--I've got it. It's because I'm a conservative Christian. Aha. I thought so. And of course I'm extra-qualified because I'm a stay-at-home daughter, and I wear skirts most of the time. Score!

--Now, as ridiculous as that sounds, I have now and again thought something along those lines and I know I've met people who do so frequently. I even feel a tendency to laugh at that term: Conservative Christian. As if being a Christian isn't enough! I must be conservative in my dress, my speech, my habits, yes. Those are all worthy things. But we don't stop there. We are conservative in our approval. Conservative in our love. Conservative in the extension of God's grace. God's grace! The grace that we think we somehow own and are able to dispense to whom we will.

Excuse me?!?!

And yet many of us (unconsciously sometimes) live with this world-view. Oh yes. We are redeemed. Redeemed. Therefore we can't let ourselves be touched by you. It's such a false stance on God's grace. Frankly, I would think it would be obvious to every single one of us who has a strain of honesty in them, that without that very Grace, we are just as lowly, unworthy, filthy as those who we are berating for not having grace. It's plain and simple stupidity.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this not of yourselves; it is the gift of God."

 -Ephesians 2:8

The other morning we were listening to an excellent message on God's grace. It was eye-opening, really, because the man was speaking on the subject. He said that we are all looking for freedom...

 Some people figure that by putting up more and more fences, by following more rules, and getting more convictions they will feel sanctified and therefore find freedom.

Some people figure the opposite--they can't follow any rules, be ruled by anyone, listen to anything--then by being entirely "independent" they will find freedom.

What both parties are missing is the fact that the only freedom to be found is in God's grace. If you think about it, both the legalism and the rebellion are indicators of a soul trying to make it on their own. The legalistic figure that they can somehow get to a clean, tidy, state in which God will accept them. The rebellious figure they could never get to that clean, tidy, state and therefore they'll have to fight through on their own.

As Martin Luther said: "The devil is forever attracting people to good works to make sure that they do not reach the point of thinking that they need the grace and mercy of Christ."

There is a marvelously simple solution to this. Realizing that we are nothing without Christ, and that He knows that. It's not like Jesus came onto earth, looked around him, sighed, beat his breast and said, "What on earth happened to these jokers?!"

He came knowing full well that we are lower than lowly. Disgusting. Vile. Adulterers. Murderers.

And He still extends His grace to us without a thought for all that. It is finished. It is done. You are accepted.

And I think we Christians forget that. We forget who we are without Christ, and we forget who we are in Christ. We live in a constant limbo, feeling that we cannot touch the unclean, we cannot climb off our pedestal because of course we must be leagues above all of them and if they touched us we'd be...tainted. We have a vague fear that because of the way we act we are holding onto our salvation. If we took off even one of our ultra-religious-bungee-cords we'd plummet away from grace.

To insure this quarantine, we sometimes put up false-fronts. We stay at home. We wear long skirts. We have long hair. We don't listen to this kind of music. We don't watch that movie. And heaven forbid we read that book!

We do not stop there. Oh no. We shun people who do. We despise them because they are lost. 

(Oh...um...news-flash--I hadn't realized that not wearing a skirt makes you an infidel.) 

This saddens me. This thinking of ourselves as so separate. Yes, we must be in the world and not of the world. Yes we must honor Christ in all our choices, including that of dress and music and movies. But we are not angels. We are those who had been sick and are healed. Does it stand to reason then that those who are still sick ought to be shunned, despised, mocked? No. Take away the grace of Christ, and what are we? Humans. Sin. We are nothing different than those people we look down upon.

It is as cruel as if we saw a child sick with the small-pox and thought, "No! No--I won't give them any medicine--they are too sick. Besides--if I stand around them any longer I might catch it again and need the medicine for myself." And off we scuttle with our little Pharisee-smiles and pity the sick people while clutching the Cure to ourselves as if we owned it.

How this must make Jesus grieved.

A friend was telling me the other day that there was young man who worked at a camp attended by dozen of conservative Christian girls. The friend stayed on past that week and the young man (after getting to know her a little better) confided, "I'm surprised you're interesting."

"What do you mean?" she asked. Then, ever frank she said, "Did you judge me because I wore a skirt and had long hair?"

He laughed. "Sort of. All those girls are just so stuck-up."

Ouch. You see, I was one of those girls. Not that I was intentionally stuck-up, but I certainly didn't go out of my way to be friendly to the poor chap. Neither did any of those other girls. They all walked around fearful that if they talked to this guy they'd somehow be sinning or at least it would have the appearance of sin and anyway, he probably wasn't a conservative Christian.(There's that little word again.)

I know this is a controversial topic. I know I am being blunt and frank and not mincing words. I know I'll probably step on people's toes. But the message and the conversation with my friend both stepped on my toes. It was as if God seized me by my shirt collar, turned me about and said, "Look at that. Look at how you are treating the people I came to save."

Guys, our mission on earth is not to shun the sick and weary and heavy-laden. Look at it this way. Jesus spent much of his earthly ministry healing the defiled, ministering to prositutes, robbers, tax-collectors...the people that we, if we lived in Biblical times, would have on our black-list. It's something to think about.