Extending Grace in Church

In the May / June 2001 issue of New Man magazine, is an article on Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. In the article, Jay reiterates much of what he wrote in his book, Son of a Preacher Man.

"Religion as it now stands is a killer. We’ve got to abandon the rhetoric that God’s love is conditional and get back to Jesus."

On the surface, that statement sounds like Jay might have a skewed perception of the church. I mean, who ever heard of a church saying that God’s love was conditional? I’ve never heard that edict come down from any pulpit before in my life. Have you? Rather, I always heard just the opposite, and rather emphatically, too.

But what we say and what we do are often times far removed, one from the other. We say that our church is a warm, loving and friendly church that welcomes people with open arms and hearts. But is that 100% true? How about 90% true? 80%?

After giving much thought to the crux of Jay’s comments, some scales have been removed from my eyes. My memory has been jogged and I have gone back a few years to when I began feeling uncomfortable and unwelcome in the church. You see, Jay is making his claims based on two different, yet revealing perspectives - as the son of a TV evangelist, and as a young adult.

When Jay’s father was charged with fraud, Jay was just a kid. This incident made him the product of a broken home and the heir to a name of shame. There was taunting on both sides of the fence: On one side was the church, which had pretty much disowned Jay and his family. On the other side was the world, which held up Jim and Tammy as an example of all that was wrong with religion in America.

As a result, Jay firmly believes that the church has too little tolerance for failure. I am inclined to agree. How quick we seem to dismiss someone who is caught in or freely confesses their sin - even though God’s Words tells us that we should confess our sins and that in so doing, we are released from the heavy yoke of guilt. It seems God is the only one in the "forgiveness with love" department. We "Christians" are seemingly eager to "cast out" those whose failures have been made public. Can you say Pharisee? But wait, that’s just a look from one perspective. Let’s take a look from a different perspective.

Jay has the look of many young adults his age (in 2001 he was 25). That is, the look many young people have who are either going through or have recently gone through, a time of rebellion. Both his arms are completely covered with tattoos and he is pierced in places that make ‘Boomers’ squirm in disgust. Charisma (a ‘Christian’) magazine did a article on him, which resulted in a flood of letters from people who had a hard time "seeing past the tattoos and body piercing."

"Bakker… may look like a poster boy for rebellion, but beneath the many layers of tattoo ink lies the heart of a pastor. It’s been nearly fifteen years since the fall of PTL, and now Bakker runs a radical outreach ministry to disaffected youth in Atlanta. His message is simple:

‘However you are, God loves you, and God accepts you, and you don’t have to change for Him. And for some reason we’ve made people believe that they have to take off their makeup, change their hair color and comb their hair before they come to church. And that’s just a lie.’"

Jay goes on to say, "I think we’ve gotten to the point where we can’t be honest anymore in the church. I think there’s a lack of embracing grace, but I think we can’t embrace grace because we’ve been told that if we’re transparent… we will no longer be welcomed in our church, that you will be outcaste. Especially if you’re dealing with a sin like homosexuality or masturbation or lust or you’re having an affair… even though they’re equal to gossip or anger. Sin is sin. But we have made some sins much bigger than other ones."

"Marilyn Manson’s got this new song where he says, ‘I’ve never had a problem with the one true God, just the people who believe.’"

I can remember being a young adult (and I use the word adult with tongue in cheek) sporting long hair and a style of clothing that did not fit the ‘acceptable standard’ of most adults and churches at the time. I suffered abusive remarks, hateful looks and numerous rejections from those who considered themselves Christians. I was always asked to "clean yourself up" and "get with the program." The only people who seemingly accepted me as I was were those who were living in the same "state of grace" as was I.

Even the "street churches" manned by young people -- while initially looking past my appearance at the time -- still tried to move me from where I felt comfortable to where they would feel comfortable being around me. I thought they were asking me to change because I wasn’t good enough as I was. I didn’t understand that the change they were talking about was from that of ‘living in disobedience to God’. I thought they were talking about an "outside-in" change, rather than an "inside-out" transformation. The problem lied either in how the message was communicated, or my misunderstanding of the message. Perhaps it was some of both. Either way, even though I heard the love in the message, I still perceived this demand that I change because, as I was, wasn’t good enough.

I’d grown up in a home where nothing I did was good enough. I had run away from that home and I was refusing to become part of a society that said I had to look, act and think a certain way to be accepted (even though, unwittingly, I was already doing that, as a means to acceptance into the ‘subculture’ that was resisting the mainstream). So I became as intolerant of the people that I perceived as being intolerant of me.

On the surface it would seem that perhaps Jay might be coming from the same perspective that I did at that age. But listen to what Jay has to say about those who claim he is a ‘grace freak’ and that his grace message is too liberal;

"I want to make it very clear that I do not tolerate sin. I believe homosexuality is a sin. I believe having an affair [is a sin]. I believe lust is a sin. But I also believe God’s grace is sufficient in dealing with it."

He says that the church is overly concerned that preaching grace is like giving people a license to sin.

"We treat that as: ‘Oh Lord! Everyone is going to go out now, and they’re going to go have sex and do stuff like this.’ And I think there is a time when people first find out what grace is, and they do that."

He talks about his own initial fumbling with the grace message.

"I’d get drunk and start witnessing to everyone I could get my hands on. I’d say, ‘Get over here, damn it. I want to tell you about Jesus!’"

Now sober for more than five years, he says, "Grace is so good that I don’t have time to be drunk."

He adds, "Look at the story of the prodigal son. God’s love isn’t just and isn’t fair. It’s unfair. It doesn’t make sense. It’s irrational. And, the fact is, when you sin when you make a mistake, God forgives you, and God loves you. And that’s just good news!"

Bakker says that the church has it backward when it comes to helping people change their lives.

"In this world where we have all these wonderful programs, I think the church has gotten too dependent on what we can do and how we can change people. We put a timeline on it. We say, ‘If you don’t have your life together in two weeks, if you don’t have your life together in six months, if you don’t have your life together in five years, you don’t belong in the church. You don’t belong here. You must not be focusing on God.’"

On the contrary, he explains, "Lasting change comes from conviction - it’s knowing God. It’s having a personal relationship with Christ. It’s allowing the Holy Spirit to work in your life."

Bakker unzips his Bible and turns to 1 Corinthians 13, the Bible’s "love chapter." He reads: "Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way."

He pauses and asks, "Do you understand that? I mean, do you get the strength of ‘love never demands its own way’? We say, ‘change to come to my church. Comb your hair. Wear a jacket with those tattoos. Hey Jay, if you’re coming to speak at my church, you need to take out your earrings.’"

"I understand. I don’t want to cause another brother to stumble. But it says, ‘Love does not demand its own way.’ Legalism is a leader’s way of avoiding suffering. I can say, ‘I don’t tolerate homosexuality; I don’t tolerate drug addicts…’ And I never have to suffer because I don’t have to love."

"I don’t have to [remember to] never give up. I don’t have to [remember to] never lose faith. I don’t have to always be hopeful. And I don’t have to endure every circumstance… but that’s true suffering, that’s long-suffering."

"We’ve got to get back to that."

I think it would be wise and prudent for us to take a look at how we treat people, especially when it comes to the teens. We say we want to reach out to the youth of our community, but only if they show up in "modest" attire and are never disruptive (unintentionally or not!) and as long as they stay away from our ‘sacred cows’:

"Don’t be in the sanctuary [especially up on the stage playing with those microphones] without an adult present! Don’t come to church too early! You can’t hang around outside the church prior to or after the Wednesday night program. The pop machine is off-limits on Wednesday nights because the CLC kids see the teens with a pop and then they want one and it creates problems. " [Ad nausea]

These youths that we are supposedly reaching out to with loving hearts find us less than convincing and most definitely hypocritical when we try to put them into our boxes of acceptability. Just as God’s ways are above our ways, so seem our ways to the youth when we say they must look or behave a certain way if they want to come to our church to learn about our ‘God of grace’ who loves us unconditionally. We may think we are helping them, but consider how we often come across to them as religious zealots and consider how they reason at that age and level of maturity (or immaturity - depending on your perspective). I’m afraid that we are giving them a very negative impression of "church" and "church people".

We need to truly be accepting of everyone that comes through our doors -- especially our youth. These teens have enough people after them for what they do and don’t do. We should not be contributing to their already insecure self-esteem. We should be embracing these students with the love of Christ, not telling them how they should march to our drumbeat of expectations.

I’ve been there. I know what it feels like. It is why I left the church when I was 16. It was oft-repeated incidents and mind-sets like those that contributed to my keeping a good distance between "churches" and myself. Even today I wonder how long it will be before I do something that is considered unacceptable and I’m ostracized from the church (or worse, within the church!). On more than one occasion since I’ve come back to the church, I’ve felt close to being rejected because I didn’t fall in line with someone’s expectation(s). Perhaps that is just my insecurity, but if I can feel that way, consider how younger people with fewer ‘life experiences’ (some of them coming from abusive or otherwise unhealthy and unstable homes) feel when we try to line them up to our expectations.

I encourage all of us to take another look at Romans 14 and prayerfully consider our actions, especially toward those who "are weak in the faith" or are still seeking a truth that will help them discover hope, purpose, and reason for living this life.

Please, I urge and pray that all of us (especially myself) "encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." Hebrews 3:13 (NIV)