Easy Love

It’s easy to love “easy to love” people.

The world is filled with imperfect people – one could say “sinners”. Many of them are in the Church. Even though many would claim we understand the Church is full sinners it still hurts when we expect to be loved, cared for, preferred by our fellow Christians and instead receive just the opposite – rejection, dejection, isolation, judgement. We identify certain sins as “worse than mine”, or “just not so easy to forgive.” And, all of a sudden, discover that we may be the one who has been labeled as unclean.

I know many of you have experienced this. You’ve been one of the outcasts. We all seem to be “the outcast” at one time or another. You know, the last one picked for the team, the one nobody seems to want, the one nobody invites to the bond fire. Hearing about the great time everyone had last night at the party that somehow, you are just now finding out about. You begin to feel like the Christian who just isn’t as cool, or hip, or “in”.

We’ve been rejected because we’re not as missional, or just not as relevant, or just not real enough, transparent enough. Rejected because of positions on social issues or political. Seems that the Body of Christ in most churches today is more willing to love the recovering homosexual than the recovering legalist. They are more concerned with the Christian struggling with pornography than the brother in Christ who is struggling with feelings of being left out of the very Body of Christ that is embracing every other struggling person but them. They are more concerned with offending those who are not redeemed than with offending their own in the Body. More afraid of turning away someone who overtly hates God than of ignoring their family of fellow Christians.

This is what the Holy Spirit through Paul wrote to the church at Corinth.

However, not all men have this knowledge; but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. But food will not commend us to God. We neither lack if we do not eat, nor abound if we do eat. But see to it that this authority of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be built up to eat things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. And in that way, by sinning against the brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again⁠—ever, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.

1 Corinthians 8:7 – 13 Legacy Standard Bible

There is something very wrong with many churches, and by God’s grace and the work of the Holy Spirit, I choose to not be apart of it. Let us love one another without hypocrisy. And, as fellow outcasts, I exhort you to join me in looking for and embracing the hard to love brothers- and sisters-in-Christ. You know who they are. They don’t constantly cry for help. They don’t constantly demand that you give them attention. They suffer silently, desperately trying to live as God has called them to live, and wondering where the joy and hope and fellowship is.

We Are Not Children of the Pandemic

Can we please stop adulting and instead keep from being children?

We have those moments. Astounding explosive understanding. Often associated with a mystery or question we have been contemplating. Or after encountering an artificially constructed wall in what otherwise should be rational, thoughtful discourse. The epiphanic understanding of why or cause. Why was this wall to what was normally adult discourse important enough to shut down the discussion? Why are irrational solutions to a problem continually being pushed by the power-brokers and accepted by a large number of my acquaintances?

And the understanding occurs. The answer emerges. Light dawns on our darkened minds. Epiphany.

Like every epiphany, this one was catalyzed by someone else’s words. It was a heterogeneous catalyst. Heather Heying on an episode of Dark Horse podcast quoted C.S. Lewis. While she didn’t give the source, the quote with source is below.

To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

 C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

Along with adding this to the reasons Christians need to resist mandates that cause harm in and of themselves, and mandates that appear on the surface to be innocuous, we should be on guard against those which have the effect of making us less adult and more infantile. Those which have the effect, either purposefully or unintentionally, of offering comfort and safety in exchange for submission and surrender of normal, necessary adult self-direction. We must do this out of love for others as well as confession of our sanctification.

Our growth in Christ, our Sanctification, is just that. Leaving behind of innocence and dependence on others, and a welcomingly taking on knowledge and responsibility for our actions. Just as Paul the Apostle exhorted growth by using the distinction of adult versus child in his letter to the Church at Corinth:

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

1 Corinthians 13:9-12

We must grow. Adults must be adult. There is work to be done. Planning, thinking, talking, and doing. The world of maturity that includes responsible protection of self and others.

It is a devilish tool that causes adults to adopt childish characteristics. Yet, it is just that we face.

Here’s the conundrum. We have all faced the threat of this pandemic. Portrayed as a real and present danger, we joined the battle for victory. Two weeks of isolation to flatten the curve. Wearing masks to stop the spread. A new, untested vaccine to place a firewall of immunity the virus would not breach.

And when adult, rational discourse on these and more began, the attacks also began. The rules were laid down: No loud voices. No disagreement. The decisions were already made and the rest of you must stay in your lanes. The adults had already decided what was best, and it was time for the children to be obedient.

The tools

Here is where my confusion has been. The case of Gibraltar showed maximum vaccination would not stop the virus. In fact, the vaccine appeared to be causing the rise of new variants. Just a reasonable science would have predicted if it had not be told to be quiet and sit down. When adults asked questions, they were treated like children and told to “stay in their lane.”

Masks, the adults warned, were not only ineffective. They had deleterious effects. Skin rashes from the concentration of humidity and bacteria. Reduced oxygen intake and increased carbon dioxide concentration producing mental and physical fatigue. Isolation and emotional trauma for some. Why did the controlling forces still push, force, and demand their wear? For the same reason they still demanded to isolate and control movement. And why they require, neigh, demand we submit to vaccination.

They (yes, “they”) both see us as infantile and want us to see ourselves the same.

You see, those currently in power very much want that power. To have power they must take it from someone else. Us. From the adults. They both see us as foolish, dependent, imbecilic and need us to see ourselves the same. We are infantilized.

We have allowed our freedom of movement to be curtailed as if we are children. And those in “power” have aggressively used continued to curtail our movement. Vaccine passports are now required in certain cities, and to visit our Nation’s Capital. Our Capital. The one that belongs to us!

We have been separated from work and productivity. Adults produce goods and services exchanging them for things we need and desire. Children have things simply given to them. They are dependent on others for food, clothing, shelter. Adults have the gift of obtaining these for themselves and those under their charge. When we have this taken from us, we are being regressed to the state of childishness.

What else marks the distinction of adulthood from childhood? Autonomy, for one. Being able to make decisions regarding our private personal selves, and accepting the consequences of those decisions. Self-direction. Children are told not to play in the street because it isn’t safe. Adults are allowed to make decisions that may not be safe. Like not wearing a seat belt. Or, smoking. Children are placed in child-seats, and purchasing tobacco products limited by age. Every time we have our choices taken away, we are being regressed into childishness.

And, as others have noted, this can not only be done to individuals, it can be done to societies and social groups. Entire populations. Although some observers place this trend beginning early in the 1900’s, something different is happening today.

One could wonder if it was somehow purposed. Particularly with the increased messaging from President Biden and his administration, the social media use of “fact checkers”, the political-medical propaganda-like actions.

These hands

have built houses
have laid down floors
have caressed your skin
and pulled weeds from the soil.

they have trained for war
but carry the scars and calloses of peace.
left countless words on blackboards and whiteboards
and felt the passion of both anger and love.

your hands
have made pies and cakes and a multitude of nourishment
pulled splinters
applied ointments and band aids
sewed clothing for family, friends, and neighbors.

held and comforted cancer-ridden friends
caressed the face of sister and father who’s minds are elsewhere
and parents who were no longer there.

they have packed and unpacked again our home
painted and repainted walls, furniture, and art
built and torn down
built and torn down again.

Of your multitude of precious parts, I think I treasure you hands the most.