I had an interesting weekend. There was a buddy of mine from High School who came into Chicago for a friend's wedding, and I decided to head downtown on Saturday to hang out with him. He's a guy I've known for a very long time, but we haven't talked much in recent years. Today he works as a lobbyist in Austin, Texas, involved in real estate issues. He went to Law school . . . real smart guy.
I've also known for awhile that he wasn't a Christian. In fact when we were in college, he was at the University of Texas and I was at Texas A&M, and we were both on that sorta anti-establishment, "screw the church" journey and we spoke about that often. God got ahold of my life my junior year of college, but my friend continued his path, which eventually led him into atheism and now a sort of agnostic/deism. We've talked some over the years, I've prayed for him often (at some points in a judgmental way, and at other points just as a friend that I love . . . that's been part of my own spiritual journey). But it's been at least 4 or 5 years since we've talked.
Now, given my background, and my own pretty moderate views when it comes to politics and culture, I feel I can generally hang with a liberal and democratic crowd. But it was very interesting to note the reaction I recieved from just about all of those folks when they asked me what I did for a living. "Well, I'm starting a church in a suburb of Chicago." Icy winds through there did blow. . . . I generally hate that question anyway. After dropping the Pastor-bomb, conversation gets alittle awkward. But this was different. It was like I had just punched Rosa Parks in the face.
The next day, I was talking to my buddy about it, and we had a great discussion about the negative perception among many young, politically engaged people with respect to the church. Of course, the relationship between evangelicals and the Republican Party has long been chroncicled by the news media and every Southern Baptist to grace an altar call in the past 3 decades. But the decided changes among younger evangelicals in their political loyalties have not recieved as much attention in recent years. The emerging church, which has topped evangelical news for the past decade, and which has challenged many of those politically loyal ruts, is still a completely foreign concept to my friends from Austin. To them, the church is still a place of judgment and callous dismissal of the things they care most deeply about. All churches are alike in their opinions, and they'd rather LACK a relationship with God than gain a relationship with a Christian.
But there is that sense of longing there. As we sat for lunch yesterday, my friend told me "When I'm around you, I start to realize how much of a spiritual void I have in my life, and I think my friends have the same void in their lives too." I took that as a compliment (whether he meant it as one or not). But it also made me sad that the political baggage that the church has taken upon itself in the past thirty years has created an enormous barrier that will be very difficult for my friend to overcome. We've made ourselves impotent in our ability to help certain people know God because when they look at the church they see Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and every Hell-fire and brimstone preacher they ever had to suffer through as a child INSTEAD OF Jesus. I'm so happy that more, younger, Evangelicals have begun to understand the damage that has been done and I'm so happy that they have begun to correct it by shedding that politically charged reputation.
I just wish we could somehow speak to my friend, and his friends in Austin, and the millions of people like them, to repent of our sins and let them know that we care about the stuff they care for, and that God loves them and wants them to know him.
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