The Invitation

“Emotionally, how does it feel to be wrong?” asked Kathryn Schulz in a presentation I recently watched on TED Talks. Peering out into the crowd, she listened for some responses.

“Dreadful.”

“Embarrassing.”

A thumbs-down from the girl in the background.

Schulz points out that these were great answers, but they were answers to a different question: “You guys are answering the question, ‘How does it feel to realize you’re wrong?’” She continued, “Being wrong feels like being right.”

Much of the time, we live our lives thinking we’re right, especially us as Christians.

Recently, a fellow Christian and I sent messages back and forth, aiming to resolve a conflict. “Sorry that I expected as a man of God you would…” she wrote, feeling my Christianity threatened. “Apparently we are in two different places spiritually,” the following sentence proclaimed.

The statements interrogated my spirituality deeply, as I saw her godliness surpassing mine, and suddenly, I sat astonished.

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The other week, I was sitting in a small group meeting. Fifteen guys sat in a circle, discussing what it looked like to follow and Jesus and what that looks like in our life.

“I realized I don’t have to worry because God has it under control,” said one. “God just wants to spend time with us,” reaffirmed another.

With almost each self-focused statement, my heart pounded in my chest.

“It’s not about you!” my heart pressed but properly failed to have the audacity to say.

As Christians, we’ve started missing what’s important. We discover it’s so easy to point fingers and so easy to make ourselves feel better, but is it really about either? We look in the mirror declaring all the ways we’ve done right and denouncing the places where we’re just a little off.

Proud we reprimanded him,

Ecstatic we defended Genesis 1,

And thrilled we can honestly say we’ve never had a sip of alcohol.

We’re told to be humble, but we develop this pride as though we have the answers to all of life’s questions. Instead, we just end up pointing fingers at those who have yet to realize that Christianity is the antithesis of discrimination. Once we stop judging others, stop praising ourselves, and start stepping back, we realize what we missed before and see all that’s wrong with the world.

That we should not have a faucet in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the other bathroom, along with a hose protruding from the side of the house; and they should not need to walk five miles to find clean water.

That she should not complain about a soft overripe apple, and he should not be living underneath that bridge, hoping tomorrow brings a meal.

That I should not worry if he will text me back, and she should not sit in the comforting darkness of her own room, wondering about the best way to take her own life.

In neglecting something greater than ourselves, we make Christianity to be about morals and God to be our therapist. We forget the portion of our spirituality that is an invitation to be a vessel of God and a tool for God’s work among humanity. We think we have this whole Christianity thing figured out but forget the part where we’re saying we know the will of God:

Why she has cancer,

Why he had to die,

Or why I’m gay.

We were placed in a unique relationship to God, a relation that says, “I am God. You are human. I know. You don’t.” The words come back, and we are humbled and left with an invitation to work within community, seeing to it that this invitation does not end with me and reaches beyond you.

This invitation to participate goes to my uncle who denounces religion, to that guy I almost dated who called me ignorant for being a Christian, and to each individual who told us that we had to change in order to be accepted in this community. The invitation is a beautiful gift that catches us off guard when our heart breaks for them and melts for him, reminding us with the words, “You are well, but remember, they need you. Love them for Me.”

Fundamentals

My small private Christian high school could be described as decently conservative, maybe overwhelmingly conservative, practicing some of the you-say-a-swear-word-you’re-going-to-hell Christianity and turn-or-burn religion.

Detentions were handed out for saying the word “fart” and don’t even thing about saying “c-r-a-p.”

The Bible was taught as a science book, the key to all knowledge, and evolution was that bad “e”-word.

Bad things don’t just happen because adversity is God’s judgment and punishment for all the times you don’t follow the commandments.

Blessings are handed out to good people, but don’t worry, grace still exists… somewhere.

My sophomore year of high school, I was dating this guy. I would hardly call it dating, but at the time, we labeled it, so I’ll label it now. He went to a different school, but we would see each other at track meets. Between events, we’d leave the track, talk for several minutes, kiss goodbye, and walk back to the track.

Some of my good friends heard what had been going on, and news began to travel. Eventually, it made it to my track coach… some other parents… and some teachers. Sure enough, I became a big target.

Warming up for my district meet, a parent pulls me aside and asks me if we can talk in the bleachers. We sit down, and our conversation begins: “Sean, if you were driving a car, and I knew the bridge ahead of you was out, I would be a fool to not warn you.”

Not exactly what I was expecting, but she continued, “Other parents and teachers are giving me a hard time because they know what you have been doing...”

Caught, and my eyes began to water as I became more disconnected from the conversation, or lack there of. Amongst my anxious staring, foggy eyes, and sorrowful sniffles, I made out, “Sean, God has no reason to bless you.”

Images of my track career going down the drain began flooding my mind, and my please-God-to-get-good-things background began to solidify. Grace had no place because of course, I had to earn grace. I had to work hard enough, and then I would gain God’s favor because God only gives things to the righteous.

I put my shades on to cover my watery, bloodshot eyes and finished my warm-ups. I won four events that day, and I didn’t leave the track with my boyfriend at all.

God blessed me with a place that taught me the key to success: please God and gain the desires of your heart. Why offer your life as it is and allow God’s will to work in your life when you can work to please God yourself and gain self-righteousness?

Grace never really made sense to me there, but that’s all right. One extreme showed me the other extreme, and indecisiveness taught me to look for the median.

Sometimes God meets us where we are, where Christians are too afraid to go, working in the lives of the undeserving:

Saving an adulteress from being stoned,

Embracing a bewildered lost son,

And kickin’ it with the outcasts.

Jesus taught the futility of all people, the lack of ability to do it oneself. Sin is best manifested in the idea of thinking that one can live this life on their own, thinking that everyday can be handled without the presence of God, without the Spirit.

The debt has been paid, and we have been taught to love God and to love others. Too many times have I tried to understand God and save others. I don’t know why it didn’t make sense earlier: love others, embrace them as they are, and let the Spirit take care of the rest. It’s all I can do.

Relentless

I never really understood how I broke his heart, crushed as some would say. He knew my priorities from the beginning: “roommates, friends, then whatever else.” Despite my loneliness, I knew I did not want to find my comfort in a relationship.

He could always see that I was struggling, though. He could see I had feelings for him but could not abandon my beliefs. He could see that I was lost, not knowing between right and wrong, failing to just give up. This made some of our conversations heated.

We were in his car overlooking downtown San Diego – from where some would say “make-out point” – when the words “I envy you” slipped from his mouth.

“Why?” I said, sitting up straight, slightly raising my voice, and feeling him dig a little deeper into who I am.

“Because you’re a Christian...”

The shock eased me back into the seat of his car because there, at that moment, I remembered my beliefs are so deeply integrated into my being that to be apart from them is to be apart from myself.


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Café Bassam is by far one of the best coffee shops to have a conversation in San Diego. Antique trinkets populate the shelves, and painted portraits decorate the walls. Dozens of round two person tables provide “spots on spots” for seating, and of course, the chai is choice.

A friend and I exchanged moments from the past few weeks with our mugs half-filled with Bassam’s regular chai. We hadn’t carried a long conversation for a little over a month, and much had happened.

After remembering claim after claim from smitten friends emerging from broken relationships, I complained, “I don’t get love. I don’t think it exists.”

“Of course you do!” His tone speaking to my doubt, and instantly, stories of his past relationship filled my mind.

“Oh yeah,” I mumbled. “You’ve seen it...”

“You know it exists,” he quickly interjected, and I had no choice but to confess,

“Yeah, I know it does. I just don’t get it so I’ll go with ‘I don’t think it exists.’”


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The spring of 2011 was a rough time for me and my spirituality.

My philosophy class tinkered with my thought, and my friend – a philosophy and theology major – kept the questions rolling. Weeks passed, and the questions grew along with my lack of peace. One day, my confidence in God held strong, but the next morning, I would wake up doubting God’s existence.

As much as I tried to abandon God, I couldn’t escape. No matter what, I couldn’t escape the idea of God and my belief in God’s existence. Call it my background, what I was taught, or whatever. But as much I said, “I don’t think God exists,” somehow, I believed God was there. Somehow, I believed God was present.

Then, I encountered love. All the times I’ve been shown love are the times, I’ve been shown God. All the times I ran from the love of my family, the love of my friends, the love of others, are the times I have been running from God and God’s presence in love.

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I had this dream once, one of those dreams where I was being chased – not by a dog, not by a bear, not by an alligator, and not by another person, but a dinosaur. A big-ass tyrannosaurus obliterated each of my footsteps behind me, ready to dismember my body bite by bite.

Approaching a cliff, the consciousness of the dream became aware to me, and I realized, “This is a dream, and once I hit the ground at the bottom of that cliff, I’ll wake up and be away from this monster.”

Flying off the edge of the cliff, I watched the ground from limbo. As the ground got closer, I anticipated the jolt that would bring me back to reality, and I hit the ground.

I didn’t wake up, and seeing the carnivore tumbling in the sky above me got me running once again.

Even when I thought I knew a means to slip away, my attempt failed, and I continued to be pursued.

Love is the relentless force out there chasing after me, and there is nothing I can do to escape from it. The more I pull away, the more it surprises me. It’s revealed moment after moment. It’s prolific. It’s everywhere. It’s God, God sweeping me off my feet and showing me there is something more, something better.