Pretty Packages

Perfect edging, professional folds, complete with hidden tape and a flowing ribbon holding it all together. A pristine, colorful package holding the mirage of offerings too good to be true. The truth: it is too good to be true! Pretty packages aren't realistic; they're only pretty. They offer little to sustain the quickened rapture of joy one experiences as the receiver. Yet, this is what we desire and expect. We overlook anything less. We want our spouses, children, friendships, programs, and churches to be wrapped up in perfectionist tones, and it's not even close to realistic.

Messy. Broken. Tattered. Beaten. Bruised. Bloody. Authenticity is likened more to a smelly, old barn birth or a trail of DNA leading to the barbaric exchange of life. We're conditioned to tuck our Christ-like attributes away in exchange for fitting in with today's trends. The early years of the church's riches were spilled out on the beggars, the downcast, the broken—a bond of togetherness, sharing in everything, including one another's lack. What a spin we've put on it! A corporation—a business of sorts—is what we call the church today, here in the "land of the free." The hint of mockery in my voice is the frustration I feel over the condition of the church. We've set the stage for the whip-carrying Son of God to ransack our temple all over again. We're a bait-and-switch company of "believers" offering pretty packages of rubbish!

We're arrogant to think we know anything at all. We tote our information around with little to no transformation or freedom following us. We're mostly empty-handed, wielding our empty-minded spirituality as truth. If only we could come to the Pauline mentality of knowing nothing but Christ and Him crucified—now there is something to live for and throw around like confetti. Christ and Him crucified. Leave it alone; stop making it out to be something it's not. You can't dress it up. It's a raw, naked, barbaric masterpiece of love poured out. Christ wasn't sent to the cross by Father God; the children of God crucified the perfect, spotless Lamb of God on their own accord. The message of the cross is as simplistic as this: humanity killed Him, the Creator poured out forgiveness anyway, complete with love and newness of life upon all, and destroyed sin and death's dominance over His creation. And somehow we're still offering a pre-Christ message of do-it-yourself.

Ministry is messy and it will always be this way. If you're interested in the tidy, you're in the wrong business. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not talking about our need to keep a record of wrongs, being sure to keep the sinful at bay and out of the way. I'm talking about people, people right where they're at. We demand cleanliness inside and sometimes out; Christ looked upon us at our worst and went despite our mess. I'm also not promoting sin, not in the slightest. I'm simply attempting to bring Christ's mentality of 'love conquers regardless of condition' to the forefront of what we stand for. So, before you go and dismiss someone for being sinful—let's go with homosexuality—ask yourself, "Did Jesus exclude homosexuals while I was killing Him on that old rugged cross?" You can compare and contrast sins if you want, but why, when you could get caught up in something much more elegant and transforming? And it is transforming!

With the last breath within His lungs, Jesus proclaimed: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they're doing!" Listen closely, take another step, and peer into what is happening here. Death by cross was the capital punishment of the day; an innocent man by the highest standard in human history—fulfiller of the law to perfection—is hanging on a tree as one who would commit the most heinous crime. Instead of defending Himself, He defends His accusers, clearing their names without any participation on their part. Talk about messy—the scandal of the cross is layers deep; waste yourself in this place, and discover the freedom afforded you.

You couldn't unravel that tightly knotted ribbon if you tried. 

LOVE IS MESSY!