Insensitive Christians

I've been thinking about this one for a while, but never written it down. It has to do with a Christian quality I believe is too frequently overlooked or disregarded in the Church: sensitivity. I believe a lack of sensitivity is tied directly to an overdeveloped sense of Self and usually results in contempt. Here's an example:

I used to work at a big huge church somewhere and I directed the "show" on Sundays, which we called IMAG, or image magnification for the congregation and a live cut to DVD. I'd sit in a darkened room in the back of the church (the "production booth") with four or five other people ("technical ministers"). Many of these technical people were volunteers who simply wanted to "do something" for the church. This involved a great deal of turnover within the "tech team."

One week, a likely homosexual came to the booth to run the CCU's (camera control units), which meant three big knobs that remotely controlled the aperture on our video cameras. Not only was he probably gay, but this man was also African-American, making him one of a handful in the whole church (of about 2,500 weekly). He did his duty that week somewhat clumsily, and it was my job to sort of "disciple" him in the technical ways. I always tried to treat our service with a light heart and with some measure of joy, while certain others frequently treated their obligations with a dire dread of mistakes and extreme criticality. As such, I would try to talk to these passers-by and learn a little about them each week. This man was friendly but shy, a little nervous perhaps. At the end of the day I thanked him for his contribution and he left. No big deal.

When he had left, the floodgates opened, as if everyone had been holding their breath for hours, waiting desperately for a chance to unleash. There was talk about his apparent homosexuality. This was "verified" by another volunteer who said the church elders had gone to his home to investigate his morals (why they have not done the same with our senior pastor, I will never know). There they found some "questionable" videos and pictures (maybe he'd rented "Brokeback Mountain," I don't know) and asked him about his orientation. There was all manner of sentiments about how uncomfortable people had felt to be in his presence and the guy in charge even decided not to let him come back, uh, but only because he was pretty clumsy on the CCU's.

I sat there on the verge of tears and nausea all at once. "This is the church," I thought. "This is no 'ragamuffin gospel,' this is a gospel of judgment, intolerance, self-assurance and condemnation." I never saw the guy again in the control room. Whether I ever saw him again at church, I don't remember.

In The Divine Conspiracy, author Dallas Willard explains that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, exerts a great deal of energy to combat what is potentially humanity's greatest sin: contempt. He states bluntly: "It is not possible for people with such attitudes towards others to live in the movements of God's kingdom, for they are totally out of harmony with it" (154).

At All Saints Church in Pasadena, there is an environment of welcome for all peoples, even (gasp) homosexuals . I've sat right behind openly gay couples there, and I think: this is right. I'm not attempting here to defend homosexuality in all its forms, I'm trying to understand what the kingdom of God is like. In the Beatitudes, Jesus shatters his disciples' perceptions about who is welcomed into his kingdom: all of the lowly, dejected and rejected and lonely and contemptible people. The church is an assembly of sinners under the grace of Jesus Christ (right?). Shouldn't all the rest of us closet sex addicts and alcoholics and thieves and liars and fibbers and tax evaders and lazy people and judgmental people and porn addicts and racists and bigots and perfectionists and self-haters and so on understand best of all that a homosexual deserves every bit as much love as we deserve, not only from God but from ourselves? One of my favorite professors at Fuller, Dr. Stassen, claims that many problems arise within the church because there is not a deep enough understanding of sin.

To conclude, I think sensitivity is just another word for "other-centeredness," which may be just another word for "kingdom-centeredness." I pray that I and my fellow disciples would be a community of mutuality and grace, that we would "enter into" the tumultuous lives all around and let the bodily presence of Jesus--the church--embrace the most contemptible among us.