thanks AGAIN, don

well, donald miller has done it again for me. he has found a way to take what's on my heart and mind and say it in a more profound, clear and christlike way than i ever could. mere days after i wrote about feeling so adrift in this life and wanting to make my story about more than surviving (hello, blog title?) i read his AMAZING book. it was like feeling so proud of myself for finally being able to see the color blue and then watching what van gogh could do with that same color as he painted starry night.

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well i just posted this sentiment on my facebook wall about pat robertson's recent comments on the haiti earthquake, in which he postulates that god is punishing haiti for a pact they made with the devil in the 1800's:

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love it when people drop jesus' name for him; sure he really appreciates it too. plus you know, his main thing was giving people just what they deserve...oh wait.

bonus:, if i say someone's misfortune was caused by their "pact with the devil" then i'm allowed to do nothing to help and call it righteousness. 100% biblical.

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and then i come here and i see in my favorite blogs sidebar that donald has just written something on the same topic in his blog too. i am all excited to hear him lay the smack down on robertson with more smarmy and zing-worthy wit than i could muster. but once again he has done it right, and better and more gracefully than me. check it out. (it's short)

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i guess i would say that i am pretty liberal as it's defined culturally, politically, religiously. but jesse likes to define our worldview in a more accurate way that i just LOVE: we are conservative with truth and liberal with love. my take on the bible is that jesus feels the exact same way. so it's really important to me to try (and i fail miserably at this usually) to keep my mouth shut on statements and judgements that i am not positive are solidly grounded in biblical truth and to be overly abundant with my love. i am far from the authority on truth and am unlikely to ever get it completely right according to god's perspective, but i know i can be right 100% of the time when i choose to love people and give them grace. every single time.

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i am incredibly tolerant of almost everyone: conservatives, hippies, atheists, pagans, republicans, satanists (not implying these are related in any way!). anyone can express what they believe in and stand for around me without pissing me off. but i get ex-tuh-ream-muh-lee upset when people start dropping supposed truths in other people's names. specifically for jesus.

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i feel like most of my friends and family who are turned off by the idea of jesus, when they express to me what they know/have heard about him, tend to have been sold a cheap off-brand version of him that is far from the actual jesus who is in the gospels, at least as i have interpreted them. often they haven't gotten this idea from what they have read in the bible or from firsthand encounters with his love, but from christians who are doing incorrect and loud PR in his name. PR that is frequently condemning, scornful and hateful. there aren't a lot of times that i can remember jesus reacting in this manner, even when confronted with outright sin, so it is frustrating that this is a dominant message that non jesus-lovers hear loud and clear from those of us who do love him. since they aren't familiar with his love and truth they can't discern the person screaming jesus' name to garner authority for their judgements/power/hatred from the other person who is whispering the same name in peace and kindness and forgiveness over them.

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this sucks. i wish there was another word for the person's name you wanted to drop when you needed the backing of a vengeful and condemning force and that you could only use the name "jesus" in messages of authentic love and grace. that way everyone out there could know when we were being for real and telling them about our peaceful, adoring, revolutionary of a father versus when we are really just screaming the evidence of our own desperate need for his grace.

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i guess the fact is that there aren't two types of people and one group sends the true message all the time and the other group is just pure ass-hats and you're either one or the other. i think it's that i have both types warring in me all the time and more often than not i give in to desire to use my god as a hammer to beat the snot out of people who don't agree with me or as justification for how my brokenness has hurt others. but sometimes, just sometimes, the true name of christ manages to escape from my heart and avoid getting mangled by my own agenda, and it communicates a message that is true because it is love and it speaks louder than my screeching self-righteous rants and hits harder than my hammer ever could.

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so i am probably going against my whole shhhh on judgement loud on grace philosophy by having this mini-rant about robertson's comments. but i also 100% agree with don that pat robertson would be better served by me loving him than by me getting pissed at him and letting him have it (something tells me he won't be hurting for takers there). so i am choosing to do the former. it's likely that the louder i am screaming jesus' name at people, the less they are hearing about who he really is. craaaaaaaaaaaap.

me and don in november. i was awkward