The church is a strange beast. You’d think that belonging to Jesus would make us all really, really nice, and easy to get along with! Ha if you think that you’ve obviously never been part of a church!
Again today I spent time with someone who has been hurt by the church. It was unintentional, but this person somehow was made to feel that they do not fit, that they are somehow outside the circle. Many people have spent much of their lives feeling outside the group. Not cool enough, clever enough or fast enough to be one of the team. How often do our churches not continue that exact earth-bound mentality. Instead of being the diverse family that God intended us to be, we often strive to become monochromatic, same thinking groups. Little huddles of people who are very similar to each other.
But something deep in me says that is not what God intended. God loves the diversity of human life and experience, or he would not have given it to us. The church should always have room for those who are ‘different’. What about the slow of mind, the physically broken or those who for whatever reason battle to fit in socially, is there no longer home for them in the church?
And we think the xenophobia is someone else’s evil…perhaps we should look closer to home.
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