I’m probably the last person you’d want to hear from. I’m an old school evangelical. I’m more conservative politically than the most ardent President Trump fanboy. Reformed, head of my home, still affirming that marriage is only between one man and one woman, and, here’s the kicker, only people married to each other should be naked together. Add to that the stench of hypocrisy sticks to me like white on rice given my very public failures. Maybe you believe the best person to call out to you to come home would be a nice neo-evangelical, a gentle progressive evangelical, or even a friendly Anglican charismatic. I believe, however, that the best equipped person is the one who knows best how ill equipped he is. I need His grace, just like you do.
I grant that I haven’t devoted sufficient study to your deconstruction tales to write a dissertation. I can say that one prominent feature is that you don’t much care for people like me. You looked at the evangelical church and found there people who not only believe sexual sin is what the Bible says it is, but who are willing to say so, out loud, without embarrassment. You’ve found there people who treated those under their care as sexual toys, and others who, for the shame of it all, covered up and enabled. You found people who not only believe that husbands are to be the heads of their homes, that elders should be men but also who have treated some women less than respectfully. You found porn addicts, mansion dwellers, prideful academics, bullies and brand builders. You found all manner of sin, which surprises me not in the least. It’s how we got in the church to begin with, confessing our need for grace.
You have, in pointing fingers, forgotten what we all are, sinners in need of His grace. You express in your “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men” diatribes against the siblings who loved you all along the way that you are ashamed of what you once were. And so communicate your pride in what you now are. You think yourselves so humble for confessing your complicity with those you are now leaving behind when what you’re really saying is, “I used to be like the rest of you evil monsters, but I got better.”
You haven’t gotten better, but worse. The love and humility, the doubt and uncertainty reveal their true nature when you hate people like me, when you pridefully separate yourself from people like me, when you know for certain that people like me can’t be the beloved of Jesus, because we aren’t good enough. We aren’t good enough, that’s true. But Jesus not only can love us, but does love us. You too aren’t good enough. Washing off yourself all the stench of your brothers’ sins, real and imagined, will never make you clean. It will just make a stench that is distinctively your own.
There is only one thing that washes us, the blood of Jesus. Not a one of us are worthy of it. Not the racist, sexist, homophobic, patriarchal, Confederate flag wavers that Jesus loves but you will not, nor you, the Pharisee. The first man, however, as he cries out, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner” goes home justified. As will you, if you will cry the same prayer, and walk home with him. Come home. Leave your pride behind. There’s a ring, a robe, sandals and a fattened calf waiting for you.