What do we do the Terry Joneses?

I don't think it's necessary here to explain the many, many reasons that I disagree with Pastor Terry Jones' plan to burn copies of the Quran. I am assured that I can take those arguments for granted here and simply express my thankfulness that Dove World Outreach Center has revoked its plan.

That being said, I'm left wondering, what do we as Christians do with the Terry Joneses of the world?

Do Pastor Jones and I not claim to serve the same God? We both wear the name "Christian," and with that label comes a certain relationship. By biblical standards, he is my brother. Sure, we can argue that Terry Jones and I aren't actually serving the same God, because the God I serve wouldn't call His followers to do such a ludicrous and hateful thing. But I wonder if that's just a shortcut out of the challenging, painful, and often daunting task of offering grace to the people who are a million convictions away from us but remain "on our side" by logistical standards.

I don't feel like Pastor Jones and I are playing for the same team. I have a hard time imagining that he and I read the same Bible and hear the voice of the same God. Perhaps Terry Jones isn't a Christian, but I don't get to make that judgment about him, and as long as he and I both claim to be followers of Christ, I think I must figure out a way to offer grace to this man. To plan such a radical act of disrespect and hate, Pastor Jones must have a bank of hurt and anger hidden away, consuming his ability to love and holding hostage the capacity to offer grace and hope to the world.

Still though, my initial reaction is to lash out in anger against this man and lay bare all his faults and ugliness. I did this, too, when I first heard of this story last week. But lately I've been praying that I could be a person who offers grace in all she does. I don't do this well. Being back in my hometown last week I remembered how gracelessly I speak of the church I grew up in for the first 18 years of my life. That church looks little like Jesus and much like a country club in my opinion, and I'm readily available to share that thought with people who don't even ask. But that's not grace, that's not love, and that's not beneficial for the body of Christ.

So what do we do instead? How do we offer grace to our brothers and sisters without dropping our convictions of what it means to follow Christ? I don't know how to answer this question in a conclusive way, but as I've been thinking and praying about this, I have a couple of thoughts about where to start.

We must pray for the Terry Joneses of the world. We must ask God to heal these people who are so clearly broken. We ask God to let the Terry Joneses know His grace, because in my experience, the people who can't offer grace are the same people who can't receive it. We ask God to reveal His truth to the Terry Joneses, but we know this is especially hard, because it requires us to also surrender our own ideas of truth.

I think that when we recognize that we're all broken people, and that none of us are incapable of acting in such a hateful manner given the right circumstances, we are better able to lovingly and graciously approach one another. This doesn't mean that we can't be critical and vocal about things like the plan to burn the Quran on 9.11, but it does mean that we exchange our hateful gossip and crushing insults for meaningful dialogue and helpful solutions. We've all been offered grace that we didn't earn, so it just seems right to me that we should offer that grace to others even when they haven't earned it-- and to do so prayerfully, remembering that God's Spirit is far more powerful than anything I can say or do.

So here's to grace... grace for Terry Jones, grace for First Baptist Church Concord, grace for the Christians that think I'm a heretic, and grace for anyone else who shares the name Christian that I find unlovable.

Complexity

I've come to the realization that I'm not a very complex person. I have complex conversations, I entertain some fairly complex ideas, and I like complex people, but I myself am not very complex. Sometimes I wish I was, and sometimes I like to think I am, but I'm not. I don't hide much. I'm not necessarily everything that one might gather after a first meeting with me, but I'm usually many of those perceptions, just with a few more pockets of something else here and there, or perhaps a little less of something that's assumed.

[Time out: I think I should distinguish between complexity and depth. Complexity, in my opinion, has a lot to do with life experiences, whereas depth has more to do with the ideas and feelings that one explores. I know a lot of people that I would consider deep but not complex. And conversely, I know some complex people that aren't very deep. That being said...]

Most of the complex people I know don't broadcast their complexity. Instead, they try to appear fairly simple and readable, not letting anyone in on the secret that a lot more is going on than what meets the eye; this only adds to their complexity. Every once in a while I meet a person who appears complex, and actually is complex, but this is rare. But ignoring that exception, the strange (and terribly obvious) thing about it all is that you don't know a person is complex until you know they're complex.

Nine times out of ten, when I get to know someone that I didn't initially like, that person is complex. They put up walls because they've been hurt, and walls are usually ugly. But when those walls are explained, their ugliness isn't as loud as their function.

All this tells me that it's important to remember that everyone carries a story. And in order to honor those stories, I think it may be safest to assume complexity. After all, even those of us who aren't complex have complexities.

Bad dreams

A few nights ago I woke up from a bad dream that I couldn't remember.

How did I know it was bad?