I apologize

 
I'm glad that I have found a lot of friends on social media and blogs that are willing to ask the hard questions, discuss them, accept where God leads in them, and are willing to share their walk with a fearlessness, willing to stand up to any backlash.

This last week a singer, Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay, learned the hard way what happens when the church is against you, simply by ASKING QUESTIONS. For wanting to learn, for wanting to grow, for wanting to make sure they have all the information.

A man was attacked for doing the mature thing and seeking truth, seeking wisdom, not just following something he felt he didn't know enough about blindly.

I guess now he felt how the marginalized people the church attacks on a daily basis feel.

This is the type of stuff I point out in the church because it's a plague. If your underarm area smells, you take a shower and clean the area, you don't just keep spraying deodorant on it for years.

Well the church needs to take a bath. Our way of dealing with people or things we don't understand, or don't agree with, is completely foul and is distant from what the Head of the body's way would be.

We attack and attack, disparage character, drag through the mud, mock, gossip, belittle all those we feel are coming against our theology, a theology we grasp and hold closer to the heart at times than Christ Himself.

We fill in the blanks, we turn into mind readers, what the person we attack actually meant, or is actually saying doesn't matter. Our own perception, our own projection is all that matters.

It's shameful, we all, myself included because I was on this same filthy path years ago, should be ashamed, and we owe a countless number of people, heartfelt, humility filled, apologies.

So I apologize to those I strung up in the name of theology, I apologize to those who I made feel less of men in the name of theology, I apologize to those I hurt to the core and smugly walked away whispering "the truth hurts doesn't it?"

I apologize to those I wagged my "finger of truth" at, I apologize for beating you up for what, in truth, was lies. I was hoodwinked and bamboozled and wasn't humble or loving enough to consider I could be wrong, so I apologize.

I also apologize on behalf of the church to the church, I apologize to the ones to come that will have questions, that will be humbly seeking truth, that will throw caution to the wind and ask the hard questions, believing naively that the ones that are to be known by their love will embrace them and help them on this journey.

I apologize in advance that they will be eviscerated in blogs, on social media, on Christian TV and radio shows, and in Christian homes.

I humbly apologize on behalf of the other parts of this body, please forgive me and please forgive us, even the ones too arrogant and self centered to apologize on their own.

Comments

Anonymous said…
His gay communists were not what troubled me at all. What made me know for certain they are simply leading christians away from God was his statement about not caring about what the word of God says about morality. He (Dan) is a judas-goat leading people to sin and hell. Even a local thrift store threw away their CDs and removed a poster of the a customer defaced. They even SAY they reject being labeled christians..in other words, they reject Christ himself.

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