The majority of readers for this blog (unless you just happened to pop-in, love the pop-in, I'm a big fan of the pop-in), will probably find the idea of liberal churches being more true to God's word to be laughable. But lately I've begun to seriously wonder if this is the case.
Let me back up a moment and ground this a little more. Over at Wilderness Wonderings, Wes has a post on the book Deep Justice in a Broken World: Helping Your Kids Serve Others and Right the Wrongs Around Them (Wes is a youth pastor). In his post, he gives a list of distinctions between what the authors call "shallow service" and "deep justice." Here are a few examples:
Service often dehumanizes (even if only subtly) those who are labeled the “receivers.” While justice restores human dignity by creating an environment in which all involved “give” and “receive” in a spirit of reciprocal learning and mutual ministry.
Service is something we do FOR others. Justice is something we do WITH others.
Service is an event. Justice is a lifestyle.
Okay, that last one sounds kind of cheesy, but you get what their talking about. Further more, thanks to my white-middle-class-protestant familiarity with service, I would add a couple of distinctions:
Service is (often) preformed to relieve a guilty conscience. While justice is performed out of love for those created in the image of God.
Service events facilitate a connection between the servers. Justice involves connection with those who need justice.
I very distinctly remember the feelings I’ve had the (shamefully few ) times I have been involved with service projects or short-term missions projects. Quite frankly, they were completely selfish. I wanted to feel good about myself. I wanted to have an experience with the other "servers" who were there. I wanted to get gold stars with God.
And I see no indication that I'm an exception in this. It's not that the people involved with these projects don't want to benefit those whom they serve, they do. And their hearts are honestly tugged at by the descriptions and pictures of "those less fortunate." But by and large these are passing feelings, and doing a service project helps them to pass even quicker.
This is not just an attitude of the church, but the people in the church. I remember one time in Nashville I was walking down to the local and thinking, "I really hope nobody stops me to ask for money tonight. I'm so sick of that." Sure enough, when I got a couple of blocks a homeless person approached me... but he didn't ask for money. He just started talking to me. Out of a sense of obligation I stood there and talked with him until I felt I had to get away. Then, when I was going I thought, "I wish he would have just asked me for money." I didn't want to be reminded of "those less fortunate," but if I had to be, I wanted to be able to just throw them some change and get away as quick as I could. I in no way wanted to love them.
And this is why I wonder if liberal churches don't "get it" more than conservative churches. Because let's face it, if you find a church that is actively involved with the disenfranchised and downtrodden, a church that actually consistently has compassion on our fellow image-bearers, it's probably a liberal church.
And if you find a church that sends a group 'round the soup kitchen once a month, that sends short term missions teams to nice parts of Mexico and throws money at charities, but does little or nothing in its own community... it's almost certainly a conservative church.
This is only one aspect of the disparity of love in these churches. Who attends conservative churches? Me, and people who look like me. White. Middle class. And, well, conservative. Part of this is certainly elements like location, and like attracting like (both socially and theologically). But that's not the whole story.
Part of the story is this: we only want people who are like us or "better." This is different than a simple tendency for like minded people to group. When we look at others, when we occasionally attempt to have compassion on them, we do so because we see something in them... we see that maybe they could become like us. And those who are not like us, or do not wish to be like us, are completely uncomfortable in our congregations.
By no means should we cease preaching the full counsel of God (we conservatives will often bring up liberal distortions of sin and the gospel, as though this relieved us of our obligations). Love the sinner and hate the sin is a tired, but incredibly profound maxim that we should live by. But (and oh that I had a megaphone to reach every conservative Christian in America), refusing to have anything to do with sinners because of their sin does not qualify! It is not "acting lovingly by pointing out the sin," as we want to imagine. It is unequivocally unloving!
If you are not sure what I'm talking about, let me state plainly the best example. Very few conservative Christians would ever befriend a homosexual.
But how can we show the love of Christ to anyone with whom we refuse to spend time? And, to further instantiate my claims above, preaching to a gay man or a lesbian that they are living in sin until they cannot stand to be around us anymore is not loving.
Jesus was condemned for eating with sinners. Oh that we would would warrant such condemnation!
The thrust of this piece has been less of an argument for an answer to the title question, and more of an exercise in conviction, my own, and hopefully some readers. But to further indicate why I think these things may mean that liberal churches are more on track than conservative churches, I'll end with a couple of scriptures.
James 1.xxvii
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
Orphans and widows are repeatedly mentioned throughout scripture, and it's important to note that they were the disenfranchised of that time and culture. We are called here to lovingly minister to not only orphans and widows, but all who are so beset.
I Corinthians 13.i, xiii
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Verse 13 amazes me. Love is greater than faith, that which brings about our salvation.
And a quick comment here that the word for love is agape. It indicates the love that God has for us, that we have for God, and our love for others that results from those loves. It is an active love, not a warm fuzzy emotion.
I think that it is evident that liberal churches do a better job of actively loving the disenfranchised.
So then I urge you, fellow conservative Christians, out of God's great love for us, and our responsive love for God, let us actively love, not only holding onto true doctrine, but practicing true religion!
