Too often, the Church has made our shame, fear and guilt worse. There are 3 things the Church will need to offer to make the gospel into truly good news for all of us.
”For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:12–26
Every self-aware, healthy human being on the planet knows this: we’re embarrassed, anxious and culpable creatures.
We try to deal with these issues in a variety of ways: covering our shame with a compelling social image, covering our fear with excessive planning, and covering our guilt by pretending we are innocent. These are all band-aids. None of them are true solutions.
So, many of us have turned to the Church. We show up with wounds, anxiety and bitterness, hoping that “the good news” of Jesus will somehow become good news for us as well.
What many of us have found is the opposite: We have found a community of people who have only deepened our wounds, driven our anxiety into hiding, and thrown gasoline on our condemnation. The healing power of relationships is perverted into an agent of destruction.
Too many of our churches over-emphasize the gravity of sin while going soft on the love of God. We convey the magnitude of our evil and the smallness of God’s love. Year after year, we have wounded people, driven them away, and then blamed them because they left.
”Too many of our churches over-emphasize the gravity of sin while going soft on the love of God. We convey the magnitude of our evil and the smallness of God's love.
But, the Church has another choice: we can choose to be a community that embodies the gospel. If we want the beauty of the gospel to move beyond a concept and into our lives, we must experience it. And that can only happen in community.
What does it look like to create a community that changes our shame, fear and guilt?
A Community of Delight
First, as an antidote to the shame of humanity, the Church is called to be a community of delight.
We embody God’s pleasure for people. A church where our presence is celebrated is an attractive church. Naturally, we want to be around people that appreciate who we are. Sometimes in life, it can feel like people love us but they don’t like us. (In time, we begin to believe that God also loves us but does not like us.) We need to be both loved and liked.
Often, we as Christians are scared that if we celebrate people too much they will not take their sin seriously. We get nervous that if we praise people they will become self-centered. We’re scared to affirm so we withhold our praise. We must put these fears aside and learn to celebrate God at work in the lives of others. This is why the scriptures tell us to “encourage one another”, “consider others better than yourselves”, “admonish one another” and “honor one another”. This also helps us to “stop passing judgement on one another”.
As Brennan Manning said, “To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful.”
”To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary... like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Brennan Manning
Just as Jesus delights in us, we delight in him. Just as Jesus delights in others, we do the same. For people to believe that Jesus delights in them, they often need others to delight in them first. To create a culture of delight within our church, we ourselves must be people who learn to delight in others. What would it look like to find pleasure in other people and offer words and tokens of affirmation to them?
A Community of Presence
Second, as an antidote to the fear of humanity, the church is called to be a community of presence.
We embody God’s participation with people. To be present is to engage the lives of others through acts of love. Love is more than our state of mind. Love requires active participation. I love the way that Eugene Peterson describes Jesus’ words from Matthew 7:12 in The Message, “Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get.”
”Love must be embodied and experienced to be believed. That happens through presence.
Why is our presence important? As Rich Plass says, “The most important thing any of us bring to life and ministry is our transformed and transforming presence.” Love must be embodied and experienced to be believed. That happens through presence. Just as God is present with us, we are present with others. To the world around us, our absence signifies God’s absence and our presence signifies God’s presence. People believe God is present with them as his people show up.
We cannot offer all of the answers that fear often demands. However, we can offer our presence – the gift that reminds people they are not alone, have not been forgotten, and will not be unsupported. God does not give us all the answers we want. But, he gives us his presence. We can do the same. What would it look like to be active, responsive and present in the lives of others?
A Community of Grace
Third, as an antidote to the guilt of humanity, the church is called to be a community of grace.
We embody God’s forgiveness of people. To forgive someone is to remove their debt. The debt doesn’t disappear. The debt is absorbed and paid for by the offended party. This is why forgiveness is so costly.
When people in our church community sin, use poor judgment, act out of their unhealed wounds, or don’t mature in the faith as fast as we think they should, how can we respond with grace? What would it look like to be known as a church where people can confess their sins, express their anger and grieve their losses with the security that their relationships will still hold them? This is no easy task.
”12-step groups are known for this type of radical grace. Recovering addicts make no excuses for the bad behavior of others and yet they also don’t condemn people. They don’t excuse the behavior but they always excuse the person.
12-step groups are known for this type of radical grace. Recovering addicts make no excuses for the bad behavior of others and yet they also don’t condemn people. They don’t excuse the behavior but they always excuse the person. They want to cancel destructive behavior. They don’t want to cancel people. Likewise, the church is called to give grace to others as we receive grace from God. When we fail to receive God’s grace, we fail to give God’s grace. What would it look like to be someone who absorbs the debt of others as Jesus has done for you?
To become this kind of community requires all of us. Every member of the Body plays a significant role. As we do life together, we learn the great joy of the purpose of life: loving and being loved in relationships with God, others and ourselves.
Jesse Eubanks is the Founder and President of Love Thy Neighborhood. He’s been leading urban missions programs for young adults since 2005. He is the host of the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast and an ordained minister. He is the author of How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself and Others Through the Enneagram from Zondervan Books and is passionate about the intersection of social action, relational health and Christian spiritual formation. Relevant Magazine named Jesse one of the top 50 Christian artists and activists making an impact on culture in America.
