Most scholars believe that before Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John ever got written down, before Romans, before Revelation, before any of it, Paul sat down around the year 50 and wrote a letter to a small struggling church in Thessalonica.
Coming back to your earlier note about prevenient grace, which expresses what I have come to think of as the foundation.
I felt bad because I could not bring myself to do the aggressive “evangelism” my church wanted. Eventually, I left there and went to work for a nonprofit that housed the homeless while I couldn’t be sure members of the old church knew who worked across the street at Safeway. Given the circumstances of getting that particular job, I believe God’s grace was at work.
The Safeway detail says everything. A church organized around knocking on the doors of strangers, and nobody knew the person working right across the street. I felt that same guilt you are describing, that sense that something must be wrong with me for not being able to do it. It took me years to hear that feeling as my conscience doing its job. And yes to prevenient grace as the foundation. If God is already at work in a person long before I show up, then I am never the one bringing God to the porch. I am just arriving late to something already underway. Sounds like grace walked you right into that job. Thank you for sharing this here, Gretchen.
And not only that, but this is one I keep coming back to as I see Christians trying to police the morality of the entire world:
"I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. 'Expel the wicked person from among you.'”
1 Corinthians 5:9-13 NIV
We are clearly not called to enforce Christian morality on an unbelieving world.
Yes, Kevin, and that middle line gets me every time. Paul asks what business it is of his to judge outsiders and then just hands that whole job to God. He even closes the escape hatch when he says avoiding immoral people in general would mean leaving the world entirely. Corinth was a port town and he knew exactly what he was living next to. He still declined to make the church into the morality police of the empire. What strikes me is that 1 Corinthians comes several years after 1 Thessalonians, so this is a consistent instinct in him rather than a one-off mood. Thanks for bringing this one, I might have to give it its own essay.
In that same letter, there's also the statement in 1Cor2:15 where Paul says that while the spiritual man judges all things, he himself is not subject to any human judgment. Try that on the next lot who try to judge you!
Icky memories of being coached at a church camp retreat on how to minister to (read: convert) our assigned inner city kids are now front and center 🙄 I also grew up with calls to evangelize to people I know ("Invite your friends to church!") and it always, always felt awkward. I used to put it down to generic social anxiety (which is somewhat true), but now I think it's because I knew even as a teenager that I was being asked to do something that would make other people uncomfortable, and I didn't like that.
I also think that, as far as the Great Commission is concerned, Jesus did ask us to make disciples and spread the gospel, yes, but that command doesn't mean "convert people to Christianity." It never did, because a) Christianity as we know it didn't exist back then, and b) converting people is not our job. That's something that has to happen internally, on the person's own terms. I believe Jesus was talking about helping people become attuned to His way of living and loving (which, when you think about it, does not require becoming a Christian), and that the gospel He was talking about was something more like "God loves you and He wants you to love other people in the same way," not "If you believe I died on the cross for you, then you are saved and you get to go to heaven!"
Hope, the word that stops me here is “assigned.” Kids handed out to other kids like a route to cover. And what you said about social anxiety is something I have thought about a lot, because I think a lot of us were told our discomfort was fear when it was actually our conscience noticing we were being asked to make someone else uncomfortable for our own sake. That instinct was trustworthy the whole time. I am with you that making disciples means apprenticing people to the way of Jesus rather than closing a transaction, and that the good news he actually preached was a whole lot bigger and kinder than the version I was handed on those porches. Thank you for laying all this out. You’re awesome.
“the gospel He was talking about was something more like "God loves you and He wants you to love other people in the same way," not "If you believe I died on the cross for you, then you are saved and you get to go to heaven!"”
Beau, thank you so much for putting into words a topic that has left me unsettled for years. I so appreciate your words about living a simple, quiet, respectable life and just reaching out with love to our neighbors and those who enter our lives. It is such a powerful thing to quietly love and support other people. They will notice. They will question where your kindness and caring come from. One day, if the Lord provides the opening, we can then tell them our story - then let it sit quietly until the time when our Lord God works in those people's lives. What a release!
At one point in my Christian walk, I was connected to a church that sent us out into the community with that one sentence you shared. It made me feel icky as well to question someone that way. We wrongfully believe we have the power to change hearts with just the right words. We don't. That is the Lord God's job. He changes hearts.
Your words came a perfect time as I am trying to find my next step in life after becoming a widow. You have helped me straighten out my path. Thank you!
God bless, Toni. Praying you realize daily that the Lord is WITH you, goes BEFORE you, and is hemming you in BEHIND as you move forward in a new way. <3
Toni, I’m sitting with the last part of your comment more than anything else. Becoming a widow reorders everything, and finding the next step is slow work that does not follow a schedule. I’m honored the essay met you somewhere in that, and I’m holding you in prayer as you feel your way forward. What you wrote about not having the power to change hearts is the whole thing. That release you named is real. It is such a relief to put down a job that was never ours. And you are right that people notice. The story gets told eventually, usually to someone who asked first. Thank you for trusting us with where you are.
This is one of your best. I shared it with one of my best friends who believes he is called to share the Gospel. He and a retired Baptist minister are planning a class to help people do that. I shared this with him so he will think about what you have said and perhaps reflect on what you have said which is so true.
Bob, this means a lot coming from you. And I want to say something about your friend, because a person who feels called to share good news is not my opponent here. I hope his class is full of people who love their neighbors well. My hope is that the sharing looks like the life Paul described, ordinary and trustworthy and unhurried, rather than the porch visits I grew up doing. Tell him I would genuinely love to hear how the class goes. See you soon.
This whole essay is exactly the faith that could lead our whole bodies into peace, individually and collectively.
"Learn your neighbor’s name before you ever learn their religious background." Exactly this is really it. It's not about the "state of their soil", it's about their humanity. Showing up to be a real, genuine, neighbor, with no agenda.
I always love what I read on your page, but this article might be my favorite. Defining the 'icky' feeling before you knew an elevated term...I totally jive with that! Praise the Lord for the Holy Spirit in us and giving us ears to hear that this was not what God's design. And just the reminder of the Thessalonians passage, living a quiet life, so beautiful. Thanks, Beau, for so eloquently sharing what God has revealed to you.
I have been trying to communicate exactly what you are saying, and have even blamed my reticence (I don't know the word "icky") on my introversion, but you are absolutely right and it needs to be said. Thank you for taking the time.
P.S. I'm sorry, I cannot contribute financially - I need to stay independent myself to continue my pastoral work.
Robert, please do not apologize for a second about the financial piece. Everything essential here stays free for exactly this reason, and a fellow pastor reading along is more than enough. What you said about blaming it on introversion is something I keep hearing in these comments, and I think a lot of us were handed a personality explanation for what was actually our conscience telling us something true. Reticence about making someone uncomfortable for our own sake is not a temperament flaw. Grateful for you and for your work.
People who are not natural extroverts have been made to believe that they need to change their nature to be a "real" disciple.. I appreciate what you write, and this piece was particularly encouraging. God be with you.
Icky indeed. I remember feeling the same when we did 'pub evangelism' here in the UK. We went into a local pub and talked to some lovely, open-hearted people, on the fictional pretext that we were 'doing a survey' and this made people open up. How dishonest was that. Never again. Never, ever again. Icky indeed; but I think I might have felt double icky because of the deception element.
Fortunately, we never used the "If you died tonight, do you know for certain you would go to heaven?" question. I say that because actually, for *most* Evangelicals (or at least those who don't believe in 'once saved, always saved'), they are selling a false bill of goods. The truth is that people like that*don't themselves know* where they'd go if they died tonight.
Let's say that the moment of death for one of those believers comes when he's in a parking lot, and suddenly sees that an armed robbery is going down. One of the robbers sees our believer friend watching and, so there are no witnesses, he shoots our friend dead. Our believer sees the pistol turning towards him and, in that last moment of consciousness, he thinks 'You b@stard!' and then he's dead. He doesn't have the time to ask for forgiveness, nor to 'keep short accounts'. So it's off to the big fire he goes, because of that one 'unconfessed sin'.
Or maybe he 'becomes a Christian', but he's gay, or he's addicted to porn, or whatever perceived 'sin' his new church wants to convince him of, and he can't 'break free' from that. So is that assurance of where he will go, is that now cancelled? I think the point is that, according to any legalist who claims that yes salvation is by grace but we need to hold on to it by works - which is most of them, really - their salvation is not as ironclad as they want to think it is, and certainly not as ironclad as the version they use to sell Jesus to their victims. So they are selling a false bill of goods. Not that they can usually think to that level, of course...
Tony, the survey pretext is the part that gets me. Approaching someone with a friendly cover story so they will open up turns the whole encounter into something other than what it appears to be, and people can usually feel that even when they cannot name it. No wonder it doubled the ickiness. You have named something real about the question itself too. Certainty is the whole sales pitch, and a lot of the people asking it are living with far less of it than the question implies. I keep thinking about how much anxiety that framework quietly generates in the people inside it. Whatever assurance actually is, I do not think it was ever meant to hang on whether you got a sentence said in time.
Yeah, spot on. It also uses as a threat the entire (and humanly unfathomable) concept of God knowing everything. He can read your thoughts, so, like Santa, he knows whether you've been naughty or nice! I'm sure there's more to God's omniscience than just using it against people whom He gave His Son for...
I have practiced Buddhism for over 50 years. Layperson not Priest. UCLA Kinesiology Degree. Music Producer. Author. My posts are fun, optimistic, and inspiring. I am very wealthy from hard work so I do not solicit paid subscriptions.
“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” It’s impossible for us to formulate what a loving way to share Him with others is. If the Holy Spirit asks us to say a word to someone - and we follow this in love - we don’t need a ten year run up though!
Coming back to your earlier note about prevenient grace, which expresses what I have come to think of as the foundation.
I felt bad because I could not bring myself to do the aggressive “evangelism” my church wanted. Eventually, I left there and went to work for a nonprofit that housed the homeless while I couldn’t be sure members of the old church knew who worked across the street at Safeway. Given the circumstances of getting that particular job, I believe God’s grace was at work.
The Safeway detail says everything. A church organized around knocking on the doors of strangers, and nobody knew the person working right across the street. I felt that same guilt you are describing, that sense that something must be wrong with me for not being able to do it. It took me years to hear that feeling as my conscience doing its job. And yes to prevenient grace as the foundation. If God is already at work in a person long before I show up, then I am never the one bringing God to the porch. I am just arriving late to something already underway. Sounds like grace walked you right into that job. Thank you for sharing this here, Gretchen.
Yes!
And not only that, but this is one I keep coming back to as I see Christians trying to police the morality of the entire world:
"I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. 'Expel the wicked person from among you.'”
1 Corinthians 5:9-13 NIV
We are clearly not called to enforce Christian morality on an unbelieving world.
Yes, Kevin, and that middle line gets me every time. Paul asks what business it is of his to judge outsiders and then just hands that whole job to God. He even closes the escape hatch when he says avoiding immoral people in general would mean leaving the world entirely. Corinth was a port town and he knew exactly what he was living next to. He still declined to make the church into the morality police of the empire. What strikes me is that 1 Corinthians comes several years after 1 Thessalonians, so this is a consistent instinct in him rather than a one-off mood. Thanks for bringing this one, I might have to give it its own essay.
In that same letter, there's also the statement in 1Cor2:15 where Paul says that while the spiritual man judges all things, he himself is not subject to any human judgment. Try that on the next lot who try to judge you!
Thank you. I recently read that passage and had a good deal of trouble with it—I argue with Paul a lot. Your thoughts help a lot.
Oh man. I love this. Words for what my heart has known since I first entered a church.
Your heart knew. Thanks for being here, Denise.
Icky memories of being coached at a church camp retreat on how to minister to (read: convert) our assigned inner city kids are now front and center 🙄 I also grew up with calls to evangelize to people I know ("Invite your friends to church!") and it always, always felt awkward. I used to put it down to generic social anxiety (which is somewhat true), but now I think it's because I knew even as a teenager that I was being asked to do something that would make other people uncomfortable, and I didn't like that.
I also think that, as far as the Great Commission is concerned, Jesus did ask us to make disciples and spread the gospel, yes, but that command doesn't mean "convert people to Christianity." It never did, because a) Christianity as we know it didn't exist back then, and b) converting people is not our job. That's something that has to happen internally, on the person's own terms. I believe Jesus was talking about helping people become attuned to His way of living and loving (which, when you think about it, does not require becoming a Christian), and that the gospel He was talking about was something more like "God loves you and He wants you to love other people in the same way," not "If you believe I died on the cross for you, then you are saved and you get to go to heaven!"
Hope, the word that stops me here is “assigned.” Kids handed out to other kids like a route to cover. And what you said about social anxiety is something I have thought about a lot, because I think a lot of us were told our discomfort was fear when it was actually our conscience noticing we were being asked to make someone else uncomfortable for our own sake. That instinct was trustworthy the whole time. I am with you that making disciples means apprenticing people to the way of Jesus rather than closing a transaction, and that the good news he actually preached was a whole lot bigger and kinder than the version I was handed on those porches. Thank you for laying all this out. You’re awesome.
Your validation of what I was/am feeling and thinking means a lot, Beau. Thank you so much. You're awesome too :)
“the gospel He was talking about was something more like "God loves you and He wants you to love other people in the same way," not "If you believe I died on the cross for you, then you are saved and you get to go to heaven!"”
Amen and Amen!
Beau, thank you so much for putting into words a topic that has left me unsettled for years. I so appreciate your words about living a simple, quiet, respectable life and just reaching out with love to our neighbors and those who enter our lives. It is such a powerful thing to quietly love and support other people. They will notice. They will question where your kindness and caring come from. One day, if the Lord provides the opening, we can then tell them our story - then let it sit quietly until the time when our Lord God works in those people's lives. What a release!
At one point in my Christian walk, I was connected to a church that sent us out into the community with that one sentence you shared. It made me feel icky as well to question someone that way. We wrongfully believe we have the power to change hearts with just the right words. We don't. That is the Lord God's job. He changes hearts.
Your words came a perfect time as I am trying to find my next step in life after becoming a widow. You have helped me straighten out my path. Thank you!
Toni Hobbs
God bless, Toni. Praying you realize daily that the Lord is WITH you, goes BEFORE you, and is hemming you in BEHIND as you move forward in a new way. <3
Toni, I’m sitting with the last part of your comment more than anything else. Becoming a widow reorders everything, and finding the next step is slow work that does not follow a schedule. I’m honored the essay met you somewhere in that, and I’m holding you in prayer as you feel your way forward. What you wrote about not having the power to change hearts is the whole thing. That release you named is real. It is such a relief to put down a job that was never ours. And you are right that people notice. The story gets told eventually, usually to someone who asked first. Thank you for trusting us with where you are.
Im so vibing with this!
No ick
No force
No striving
Just alignment, peace and love demonstrating God’s peace and love to our neighbors
Yes Lisa, that’s it exactly. No ick, no force, no striving. Just showing up as a decent neighbor and letting that be enough. Thanks for reading.
This is one of your best. I shared it with one of my best friends who believes he is called to share the Gospel. He and a retired Baptist minister are planning a class to help people do that. I shared this with him so he will think about what you have said and perhaps reflect on what you have said which is so true.
Bob, this means a lot coming from you. And I want to say something about your friend, because a person who feels called to share good news is not my opponent here. I hope his class is full of people who love their neighbors well. My hope is that the sharing looks like the life Paul described, ordinary and trustworthy and unhurried, rather than the porch visits I grew up doing. Tell him I would genuinely love to hear how the class goes. See you soon.
I believe you are spot on! God is far more concerned with who we are becoming as a person than what we do in the name of God!
Amen, Scott. Formation over performance. Thanks for reading.
This whole essay is exactly the faith that could lead our whole bodies into peace, individually and collectively.
"Learn your neighbor’s name before you ever learn their religious background." Exactly this is really it. It's not about the "state of their soil", it's about their humanity. Showing up to be a real, genuine, neighbor, with no agenda.
Thank-you for these words.
I always love what I read on your page, but this article might be my favorite. Defining the 'icky' feeling before you knew an elevated term...I totally jive with that! Praise the Lord for the Holy Spirit in us and giving us ears to hear that this was not what God's design. And just the reminder of the Thessalonians passage, living a quiet life, so beautiful. Thanks, Beau, for so eloquently sharing what God has revealed to you.
:)
I have been trying to communicate exactly what you are saying, and have even blamed my reticence (I don't know the word "icky") on my introversion, but you are absolutely right and it needs to be said. Thank you for taking the time.
P.S. I'm sorry, I cannot contribute financially - I need to stay independent myself to continue my pastoral work.
Robert, please do not apologize for a second about the financial piece. Everything essential here stays free for exactly this reason, and a fellow pastor reading along is more than enough. What you said about blaming it on introversion is something I keep hearing in these comments, and I think a lot of us were handed a personality explanation for what was actually our conscience telling us something true. Reticence about making someone uncomfortable for our own sake is not a temperament flaw. Grateful for you and for your work.
People who are not natural extroverts have been made to believe that they need to change their nature to be a "real" disciple.. I appreciate what you write, and this piece was particularly encouraging. God be with you.
Thank you.
You’re welcome, Martie! 🫶
Icky indeed. I remember feeling the same when we did 'pub evangelism' here in the UK. We went into a local pub and talked to some lovely, open-hearted people, on the fictional pretext that we were 'doing a survey' and this made people open up. How dishonest was that. Never again. Never, ever again. Icky indeed; but I think I might have felt double icky because of the deception element.
Fortunately, we never used the "If you died tonight, do you know for certain you would go to heaven?" question. I say that because actually, for *most* Evangelicals (or at least those who don't believe in 'once saved, always saved'), they are selling a false bill of goods. The truth is that people like that*don't themselves know* where they'd go if they died tonight.
Let's say that the moment of death for one of those believers comes when he's in a parking lot, and suddenly sees that an armed robbery is going down. One of the robbers sees our believer friend watching and, so there are no witnesses, he shoots our friend dead. Our believer sees the pistol turning towards him and, in that last moment of consciousness, he thinks 'You b@stard!' and then he's dead. He doesn't have the time to ask for forgiveness, nor to 'keep short accounts'. So it's off to the big fire he goes, because of that one 'unconfessed sin'.
Or maybe he 'becomes a Christian', but he's gay, or he's addicted to porn, or whatever perceived 'sin' his new church wants to convince him of, and he can't 'break free' from that. So is that assurance of where he will go, is that now cancelled? I think the point is that, according to any legalist who claims that yes salvation is by grace but we need to hold on to it by works - which is most of them, really - their salvation is not as ironclad as they want to think it is, and certainly not as ironclad as the version they use to sell Jesus to their victims. So they are selling a false bill of goods. Not that they can usually think to that level, of course...
Tony, the survey pretext is the part that gets me. Approaching someone with a friendly cover story so they will open up turns the whole encounter into something other than what it appears to be, and people can usually feel that even when they cannot name it. No wonder it doubled the ickiness. You have named something real about the question itself too. Certainty is the whole sales pitch, and a lot of the people asking it are living with far less of it than the question implies. I keep thinking about how much anxiety that framework quietly generates in the people inside it. Whatever assurance actually is, I do not think it was ever meant to hang on whether you got a sentence said in time.
Yeah, spot on. It also uses as a threat the entire (and humanly unfathomable) concept of God knowing everything. He can read your thoughts, so, like Santa, he knows whether you've been naughty or nice! I'm sure there's more to God's omniscience than just using it against people whom He gave His Son for...
Great verse (1 Thessalonians 4:11) to anchor this on!
Thanks, Gene. That verse has been quietly rearranging things for me for a while now. Glad it landed.
I have practiced Buddhism for over 50 years. Layperson not Priest. UCLA Kinesiology Degree. Music Producer. Author. My posts are fun, optimistic, and inspiring. I am very wealthy from hard work so I do not solicit paid subscriptions.
“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” It’s impossible for us to formulate what a loving way to share Him with others is. If the Holy Spirit asks us to say a word to someone - and we follow this in love - we don’t need a ten year run up though!