You Be The Pastor
I need your help to play a new blog game called "You Be the Pastor". Here's how we play. I give you a "hypothetical" situation and you tell me how you, as the pastor, would respond. Prizes will be awarded (jewels in your crown and all that). Ready to play? Here we go...
One of my coffee shop friends (when your office is a coffee shop, you have lots of coffee shop friends) sat down at my desk (coffee-stained table) and told me about a situation she was facing at her church. My friend "Jenny" (not her real name), a 20-something girl with a deep and vibrant faith in Jesus had been spending time with a non-Christian boy and was finding herself potentially interested in dating him. She told her Christian friends from church about this and was shocked and horrified that they tore into her for 20 minutes, quoting Scripture at her, acting as if she was on a slippery slope to the fires of hell. Then they asked if they could pray for her and were saddened when she said no.
This has caused Jenny to ask a lot of other questions about what it means to love people like Jesus loves them, and what is the church supposed to be about, and why are Christians so mean, and IS it okay for me to date a non-Christian boy?
Here's where the fun starts...You Be The Pastor: What do you say? Please click on "comments" below and let me know what you would do.
posted by Corey @ 12:03 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
First thought, without giving any thought to it:
I know this great pastor at The River who has all the answers.
:)
pmPilgrim
In all seriousness,
I would obviously ask her about her reaction and how she is feeling. I have to admit that after a few conversations I have had the past two weeks I would have to be very cautious since I have heard more than I cared to hear about how church people pick on people from a position of self-righteousness. The important road to go down until I had a better handle on it would be the "we are all imperfect human beings" approach (cop-out?)
More thought at a future time.
Barry
There are really two completely separate issues here. First, should she date a non-Christian boy. Second, how should she be given the answer. Even though the first seems to be the more important issue, I would disagree. No matter if you give an excellent defence of the typical Christian stance or tell her to do whatever she thinks best, the most important thing is to show her love and compassion in her situation. If you have the perfect answer for her and don't show love and humility, will she follow your advice? I think not. And if she does it will be out of intimidation and fear. If you answer her in a way that you decide later was maybe not the best way but do so in love and humility, you will always be able to go back and correct your mistake and be forgiven for the blunder. So the real issue is, what is your priority when answering this tough question about whether to date a pre-Christian. It should be to show Christ's love and compassion and point her toward Him so she can discover, with the love and support of a freind, what canot be embraced when preached at.
Actually some friends and I were just discussing this. I'm curious why believers are so easily offended when the Body speaks Truth to them. What is more True than Scripture? And how much of how Jenny received was actually what was intended or what she perceived? Why is it 'wrong' to speak Truth? Jesus spoke Truth. He downright got in the faces of the religious, though He wasn't as hard on non-believers. I'm concerned that some in the Body have adopted today's secular "don't judge me" culture, when we are called, as the Body, to keep one another on track. It's not judging to speak Truth. Of course it is not wise for Jenny to date a non-believer. Scripture is clear that we are set-apart, and are not to be un-equally yoked. My guess is her friends told her things along these lines and she didn't want to hear them, so she was offended. Since they are the words of God, then I guess God is the mean one. She might have preferred to have her ears tickled. Really, what answer would have pleased her? What person with a "deep and vibrant faith in Jesus" wouldn't listen to Him? If someone is standing at the edge of a cliff you don't ignore them - you yank them back. They may be irritated, but Scripture says you've rescued them.
The issue is not whether Jenny should be confronted about this issue, and it isn't the advice that she was given that was the problem. The issue is how she was told. The attitude of "I'm holier than you, therefore I'm better than you and have the right to put my wayward sister back in her place" was never the attitude of Jesus. In fact, the only people that Jesus confronted in anger were those outwardly religious but inwardly corrupt/evil/judgmental/arrogant people that are remarkably like the people who confronted Jenny.
2nd Anonomous here - Corey, it seems you are taking Jenny's word about what and how they said what they said. There are always two sides to a story! Your words against them are shockingly strong. Corrupt? Evil? You're actually judging their intentions without having been there or [I assume] speaking to them about it. I'm not denying Jenny was hurt was by them, but how much of that hurt was reaction to hearing Truth she didn't want to hear? Since I've experinced being misunderstood when I spoke to someone about their sin, I lean toward giving them some benefit of the doubt. I've found that people who are either in sin or flirting with sin are very sensitive and easily offended when confronted with Truth.
Anonymous 2 - let me reply with several bullet points (paragraphs take too much thought)
- First, while I have not talked to the counselors in question, I do have the advantage of some familiarity with the church they come from (which seems to lean toward some legalistic tendancies)
- Second, I DO know 'Jenny' and I have seen how she has responded in past situations when she has been confronted. She has always been willing to change and to allow people to speak into her life.
- Third, even if she completely misread their attitudes and intentions, from my perspective it doesn't really matter. That's how she took it, and so for her, the feelings of being judged and unfairly criticized are real and must be treated as such.
- Fourth, the attitude of the Pharisees and teachers of the law is exceedingly common in evangelical churches today. Their two main emphases were doctrinal purity and right external behavior. If you believe all of the little things that we say you should believe and do all of the external behaviors that we believe that you should do, then you are an accepted part of our religious club. But if you vary on any of those, you will be condemned and ostracized until you either capitulate to our demands or leave. (For more about this, check out the book "Faith is a Verb" by Arthur Stokes which includes a great summary of Fowlers stages of faith development...stage 3 is a good description of the mindset of most of our evangelical churches. Also, check out Dallas Willard's "Divine Conspiracy" or "Renovation of the Heart" for a great explanation about why these two emphases miss out on the heart of the gospel and do not result in transformed lives)
- Finally, I think that you would be hard pressed to really demonstrate from Scripture that a Christian dating a non-Christian is sinful. The social structures in our society are completely different from that of the Bible, so the best that you can do is extrapolate principles. Those extrapolations might lead you to believe that dating a non-Christian is sinful, or maybe that it just might not be wise, or maybe that it's completely okay. In any case, there is certainly not enough biblical evidence to declare that the words of her friends were captial-T Truth.
Thanks for the interaction. I really enjoy conversing about these kinds of things!
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