“Hell Is For Democrats…”

Posted by parkejladd on Jan 24, 2010 in Featured {Article}, Slider | 4 comments

The Map

I find a certain level of nostalgic comfort and satisfaction in defining my self-calculated limitations–in placing brackets, spaces and dashes around and between everything I’ve done and have yet to do.  I enjoy pinpointing highlights and accomplishments with multi-colored nails, sealing and solidifying my well pruned resume of a life into its appropriate place.  Miniature trophies of red, green, yellow and blue, distributed evenly over time, accurately recording my special impact on the world.  This is when I was born.  This is when I graduated.  This is when I got married.  This is when my career began.  This is when I retired.  Pin.  Pin.  Pin.  Pin.  I find semi-sweet solace in pseudo beginnings and faux endings–in having the in-between gaps planned and filled accordingly.  I take comfort in organizing my life into perfectly aligned yet adjustable spreadsheets filled with data from the past, present, and future.

I tend to organize and plan my faith in the same way.  I have a faith time line, vertical hash marks and all.  I want to remember the exact moment it started, trace the mega-conferences I attend, record the people saved in my presence, anticipate future mansion size in heaven, and hand select my neighbors before I get there.  The beginning and the end.  Christianization is typically commenced by saying a one-time, forever cleansing, hope revealing, life fulfilling, prayer.  Want to go to heaven?  Repeat after me.  That’s it.  Say the prayer, get saved, become a Christian, see you in heaven some day.  Happy trails.

Hell Is For Democrats

I once had a good friend who loved Jesus.  She would say beautiful things such as, “Jesus knew how to take care of people,” and, “He knew how to love the outcasts–the scorned, disabled, and diseased.  He was compassionate, loved His enemies, and fed the hungry.  He loved the loveless, and we could definitely use some more lovers around here.”  I didn’t know much about Christianity back then.  I’m not sure much has changed.  The more I learn about Jesus the more I realize I cannot fathom His love, cannot describe His grace.  Even in the midst of my friend’s obvious love for Christ, I managed to convince myself that she was not a real Christian.  After all, becoming a Christian doesn’t start with an inner willingness to love and follow Christ, it begins with a ritual, with a well known prayer in the presence of another Christian.  Just repeat after me.  I watched as my legalistic efforts to force my friend to say a prayer and subconsciously add another colored pin to my life achievements map slowly pushed her away from the church.  She developed a certain distrust for so called Christians, and Sunday mornings left a bitter taste in her mouth.  She finally quit going after being confronted in the church parking lot by a middle aged woman with short, brown hair and a thick, black Bible.  The woman pulled my friend aside, set her heavy Bible down, and confidently said, “Hell is made for Democrats.  People who support John Kerry will wind up in Hell.”

My friend had a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on her car.  She passionately talked about peace and voted for candidates who said they would attempt to keep it .  She ran away from that church weeping, and she never went back.  She encountered people there bent on endorsing war and voting for candidates who were willing to use bombs and bullets to get what they wanted.  None of that sounded like Jesus to her.  None of that looked like love.  None of that seemed like something she wanted to be a part of.

My friend knew more about love than I did despite the fact that she had never consistently gone to church, been a part of a Bible study, or gone to a big Christian conference.  She spent her days studying the Old Testament, reading Gandhi and Thoreau, and admiring the art of Salvador Dali.  She smoked pot occasionally, drank beer often, studied hard always, and dreamed of saving African children dying of AIDS, daily.  And she loved Jesus.  She loved Jesus so much, but I couldn’t see it.  I was blinded by her ignorance of the law.  She had, I believed, rejected God by her unwillingness to verbally commit to what I couldn’t truly comprehend myself.   In reality, she understood what embracing the love of Christ was genuinely all about.  For my friend, it wasn’t about saying a prayer.  It was about committing too and attempting courageous relationship with Jesus and growing in love along the way.  Her decision to follow Christ and love people was made before I enlightened her with “The Prayer.”  Beginning a lifestyle of love, taking on a Christian worldview, and following Christ wherever He leads requires a bewildered heart looking for hope and a belief that there must be something more to life than this messed up world.  It’s not easy.  It’s not comfortable.  The path is narrow, and few will find it.

The Journey.

Faith is in the journey, not just “The Prayer.”  It takes a lot of faith to walk with others as they travel over and through life’s ups and downs, but it takes only a little pressure accompanying a decent pitch to convince people to quote a tract.  Begin with ritual or don’t, but understand that the narrow path doesn’t end there.  Planted in the trenches of made-up church rules, I came to realize the hard-hearted legalism of my ways.  I long for the strength to take the colorful pins out of my brain, to wipe the prefabricated ideas of successful evangelism off of my time-line-faith, and to progress forward in love and compassion–supporting–not looking down upon anyone regardless of anything.  Let him with no sin cast the first stone.  Our calling as Christ followers is to love all people, uninfluenced by skin color, sexual preference, education, age, citizenship, weight, family background, or political allegiance.  It doesn’t matter what time of day your neighbor draws water from the well.  Cast no stones.  Have no outcasts.  Love.  All.  People.