.: an open letter :.

This is an open letter to all involved:

To those of you who fit the mold...
I think we have come to a place where we need to make a change.
I think we have officially reached a place where our past thinking is proving faulty.
I think we have finally arrived at a place where we need to rethink our strategies.
(Just the fact that we consider them "strategies" leaves something to be desired and possibly realized.)
We just are not having the impact upon those whose lives we are attempting to speak into that we all had been subtly hoping for.
We are making some grave mistakes and they are costing us in some tragic ways.
This thinking that truth apart from love is an effective method has come to a point where more harm than good is coming about.
This thinking that we must confront people with the nature of their own lives is missing the point of what Christ truly called us to.
This thinking that we can get away with classifying people, with categorizing them and treating them in accordance with the way that we have been taught to do, is coming up severely short.
We have grown to become people who refuse to treat everyone - especially those of unlike belief - as real people... as members of shared humanity.
We have become the types of people who refuse conversations about life and force ourselves, and our agendas, into other people's lives in abrasive, confrontational ways...
...and it just is not working as well as we had all hoped.
We are losing our voice in our culture.
We are losing our voice in our communities.
We are losing our voice with those whom we once took part in life together with.
And we are losing our voice with those who need to hear the words that Christ longs to speak through us, simply because we feel the need to confront people with our judgment of them and label them as something less than fully human (and all that that entails).
Maybe we have already lost our voice all together.

So maybe now would be a good time to begin to see things for what they are... to see people as who they are... and maybe we need to draw a line and start all over again.
And if we are brave enough to do so, maybe we can begin by simply allowing love to play a significant part in our relationships with the rest of the world.
I know that so many of us equate the love of Christ with megaphones and pamphlets and fingers in other people's faces... but I fear that we are desperately missing the point of what it means to let God use us in the context of healthy relationships with others.
For where is any health to be found in severing all ties with someone when they refuse to see our side of things?
Where is health to be found in making their conversion as the primary goal, and refusing to barge from that objective to simply speak to other honest areas of life and love?
How healthy is it for us to draw sides and expel people from sharing anything common with us simply because their view of God is radically different from our own?
I know we have grown to associate Christianity with confrontation, and in a way this is an important role that we are to play in our darkening culture and society.
But we are sacrificing our ability to make a lasting impact upon others on the altar of being doctrinally right.
It is as if we are washing our hands in the bloody mess that we make of so many of our relationships in such a way as to imply innocence of their blood on account of our having told them as we see it to be in their lives.

Friends... this is just not working!
We are turning the very people we are called to love away from Christ because we are demonstrating one characteristic we see of Christ in the Scriptures (that of confrontation) apart from others that are just as necessary (such as compassion, brokenness, grace, and transparency).
And I fear that we are choosing to do so because it is the one act that requires so little energy, wisdom, or discretion.
How easy is it for us to emphasize how wrong someone is in contrast to what we deem as "right"? (Pretty easy... for it requires little to no discretion or compassion.)
How much harder is it for us to enter into their lives with no hidden agendas, expect for the boldest of intentions to love them with honest, heart-felt compassion and desire (that being, the desire for them to be free and whole - not just to believe the "right things")?
Much harder... for it requires that we enter into the life of another in a powerful way.
But who of us were ever taught in our churches or at our Bible colleges to do something such as that?
(The answer to that may just lie at the heart of what I am trying to get at through these words.)

I doubt that many of us have ears to hear... and for the most part, we will continue on in the ways that we have been trained to think and act.
So that in the end, yes, we are proven right (in so far as we feel justified in our own hearts and minds for having stated our case with them)...
But no one chose to listen to us because of the way that we conducted ourselves in their lives...
Because of the ways that we dealt with their hearts and souls.

Just a thought... stirring deeply within my heart.
Dave Mc