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DKnoxMama's avatar

Spot on. We use this phrase in our church as a STARTING POINT, not an end. Our little church is aquiring a reputation in our rural town for not just welcoming but seeking out the "misfit toys"(what some of our folks call themselves!) and for wrestling with the implications of what this phrase means in everyday life. We definitely don't have it all together and we are honestly just beginning to feel the effects of being "that church", but we're here for it.

Thanks for unpacking this.

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Beau Stringer's avatar

That’s beautiful! Sounds like a church I’d love to worship at and be part of. Thanks for sharing your experience. I wrote this just as much to me as anyone else. I figure I’ll never run out of content if I just write what I need to hear. 😂

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DKnoxMama's avatar

I feel that! We've been saying the same thing: "I just want to make a church that *I* would want to worship at!" We've felt so much like misfits ourselves that we want other people to know that God is actually super in love with misfits and that this is what that can and should look like. So, yeah. We're working on it!

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susie's avatar

Ouch. But a good ouch.

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Beau Stringer's avatar

Thanks for reading, Susie. 😊

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Daniel Miller's avatar

My brother is gay. We grew up Southern Baptist. I learned early that real love can still harm others.

Love, after all, is more than sentiment. It’s action. You can feel love and still cause harm if your actions aren’t rooted in understanding. That’s why Jesus told the Substack story that immediately followed the Twitter summary.

Some people in that story might’ve had “Love your neighbor” hanging on their wall, but when they saw the wounded man, they passed by. Maybe they thought love meant accountability. He shouldn’t have been on that road. If he keeps getting bailed out, he’ll never learn. I feel sad for him, but I’m just loving him toward repentance.

But the Samaritan felt “splagchnizomai” before he loved by decision—a layered word describing a gut-level compassion, the kind that moves you toward someone with empathy so deep it almost becomes identification.

That’s when it clicked for me: love without empathy almost always gets it wrong. Without that “I become you for just a moment” posture, even well-meaning love can wound.

We naturally love ourselves well because we know every aspect of what it’s like to be ourselves. The real invitation isn’t just to love others, it’s to know them enough that love becomes instinctive, not abstract. This requires relationship.

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Beau Stringer's avatar

Very very well said, Daniel. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. I especially appreciated that you said “love without empathy almost always gets it wrong.” That is such an important thing to name. Many evangelicals are speaking out against empathy and calling it a sin.

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Daniel Miller's avatar

When politics is your god, then anything that challenges a political position is evil. Empathy is a threat to political ideology, so it has nowhere to go but in the camp of the enemy.

Maybe we should Trojan horse in the new word Splagchnizomai instead, since empathy has been politicized. 😏

Thanks for your voice, Beau!

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Erica Simon's avatar

Dude. Get outta here. Seriously, we gotta sit down soon and chat. This was THE phrase at our previous church and you just gave words to so much of how I felt leaving there. It was absolutely used as an end rather than an opening to something deeper. For a while I believed it. I am forever grateful that God pulled me into something more. It definitely cost me, cost us, to leave. It was hard and holy to say to people we love "this isn't right, it's not enough". Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts on this.

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Beau Stringer's avatar

Yes! Let’s do!! I’m guilty of using it to shut down a conversation too. It was so brave of you guys to step into something new. Not easy. Let’s set something up!

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Ken Ferry's avatar

So, what you're really against is the misuse of other people's shorthand slogans (let go: let God, WWJD, God is my co-pilot, cleanliness is next to Godliness - some are admittedly better than others, though all have some value) as walls to hide behind to avoid having to actually do something, and I'm good with that.

Interesting rabbit hole I'd never noticed before: Eve saw the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as being desirable for gaining wisdom. We all hopefully know that there's a huge difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowkedge is knowing how to spell zucchini (and, yes, spell check had to help me 😁). Understanding is knowing how much zucchini to plant to provide for your needs while not loosing all of your friends trying to unload your overstock. Wisdom is giving away your best zucchini recipes to encourage your friends to take more from you, then giving the rest of your excess zucchini to the local food bank. Anyway, nothing in scripture implies that the tree was good for wisdom, and human history would support this differentiation.

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Michial Miller's avatar

what does ‘love’ mean?

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Kevin David Kridner's avatar

Maybe it’s the definition of love that is off. Scripture defines love as…to know and be known by God. I can’t believe that if we took that seriously…everything wouldn’t change. Maybe we’ve defined love as…to agree with…to like…to feel good about. That isn’t knowing

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