"O Religion, Here is Your Triumph"

[If you don't already, you should know that I study history.  It is the window through which I seek greater understanding of myself, my God, and our world.  My specific interests involve the history of the church, theology, and popular religious sentiment (how people lived out their faith).  You will very likely see many of my blogs having something to do with these issues.  My goal in this has always been to examine history in light of theology and theology in light of history.  This wedding of perspective is critical to who I am and how I think.  The following is a good example.]

Doing some reading today on the history of religion in 18th-century France, I came across a very powerful quote.  This quote was voiced by a frenchman who watched one of the many executions then happening in Paris.  Then, as is often the case now, a minister of the Church was present at the execution to help care for the spiritual needs of the accused prior to death.  This is what the frenchman wrote about the minister:  "I saw him embrace the wretch, devoured with fever, as infected as the dungeons from which he was taken, covered in vermin.  And I said to myself, 'O religion, here is your triumph."'


Imagine the scene for one moment:  Here is a dirty, sweaty, disease-ridden convict.  He has perhaps been languishing in a dungeon for months--unwashed, uncared for, friend to only rats and the walls of his cell.  His hair would be unkempt, his beard a mess.  He would have lice and all manner of creepy-crawlies about his person.  His rags may be the very ones he wore when first put in prison.  Surely this was a creature to rival even the hideous appearance of the lepers in Jesus' day.  This man walks up the scaffold to the noose--appearing more animal than human.  At the top of the stairs is a hangman and a minister.  The minister prays with the man, administers his last rites, perhaps asks for a confession.  Then, amidst the boos and mockery of the crown, the minister embraces the disgusting, vile man--a last comfort to a dying soul.  Yet this resonated with the observers.  The minister, and the church he represented, not only helped, but embraced a man society had cast aside.  "O Religion, here is your triumph."

Don't those words ring powerfully in your ears?  Watching the priest love the unlovable and care for the soul of the soulless, the observer couldn't help but say: "O religion, here is your triumph."  And it is the same today!  When we minister to the sick and the needy--"O religion, here is your triumph."  When we forgive the unforgivable and embrace the outcasts--"O religion, here is your triumph."  When we open our doors to the downtrodden, eat with the "sinners," embrace the broken--"O religion, here is your triumph."  When we bring light to the dark and hope to the hopeless--"O religion, here is your triumph." When we love with a love that is not our own, but from God above--"O religion, here is your triumph."

Why a triumph?  Because God has told us that the greatest commandments in the Bible (the Law) are to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.  LOVE.  Love is and has always been the answer.  On that scaffold, the minister loved the unlovable and embraced the disgusting, putrid, vile man before him.  To use a biblical analogy--he washed the man's feet.  He was not proud; he served the man in love.  As a church, when we LOVE someone, we triumph.  When people associate our congregations, our buildings, our testimonies with love, we triumph.  When we are described not as religious elitists, but as men and women of compassion, of tenderness, of love, we triumph.  When we do for "the least of these" what we would do for ourselves, we triumph.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE--"O religion, HERE is your triumph"

I want to be a man that loves more.  I want to be in a congregation that loves more.  I want to be part of a  global church that loves more.  The church, my mother, is a loving mother at her very core.  Everything about her yearns to love the Father better and share HIS immense love with HIS sons and daughters.  Everything in her wants to embrace the vile, disgusting creature standing in front of his noose.  I pray that the church will be released to love the world in ways she has never done before.  I want a relational church, a messy church, a church not afraid to take in the needy, not afraid to hug the disgusting, unashamed about their desire to share God's love with the sinners, the broken, the orphans, the widows, the adulters, the sick, the dying--"O religion, here is your triumph."

This love does not mean, however, that I want a church who betrays her principles to be more "accepting."  Far from it.  True love does not lower itself, but rather uplifts its recipients.  Think of a father.  Does a loving father lower himself to the level of his child, coddling him, serving him, pandering to his every whim?  No.  That's absurd.  Those are the parents we mock at dinner parties and barbecues while their kids are screaming and being brats. Rather, the good father is the one who pushes his son, desiring him to grow and develop into a man of character, refined in adversity, and perfected in Christ.  The best father is not the one buying their kid chocolate everyday, but the one teaching the child how to enjoy chocolate.  The church's love needs be the same.  So many today believe the Church needs to surrender its values, lower itself to the ways of the world to be more approachable, more loving, more accepting.  That's as absurd as admiring the coddling father.  No, the church needs to love the world in ways that redeem it and not in ways that encourage it to continue down paths of destruction.

But it needs to love--"O Religion, here is your triumph"

I need to love.  I need to love more.  We all do...

I have seen the power of love firsthand.  I have spent whole summers loving on kids at summer camp, trying to show them just a fraction of the joy and affection God offers them.  I have ministered to the broken at this camp oftentimes.  I have sat with kids who tell me how thankful they are for a Heavenly Father who will never beat them like their earthly father.  I have put my arm around them and told them to rest in Him--"O Religion, here is your triumph."  I have worked in youth groups for years now, trying to show a spiritually-drained generation that there is exceedingly more love to be found in the Church and from God the Father than from drugs, money, and pleasure.  Though a hard message to sell, I have however seen kids on their knees in response to it--"O religion, here is your triumph."  In Australia, I helped the men and women of Hope Valley feed the homeless.  I saw how hard it was to love, to embrace someone who was disgusting in many ways.  I had to learn to love and show compassion despite smell, appearance, or personal comfort.  And yet I saw dozens at these events eating a good meal, socializing with each other, and knowing that all came from Christians who sought glory not for themselves, but for God--"O religion, here is your triumph."

I say that not to highlight what I have done.  On the contrary, I can do nothing without the grace of Christ.  I only say it to evince one simple truth--love for God and love for others BUILDS the Kingdom. Years ago, the frenchman noticed this kingdom-building love in the moments before the condemned man died.  How many more might see it today? Were the church to continue loving the world in meaningful, uplifting, and powerful ways, how much more might the Kingdom grow?

Love, my friends.  Love with reckless abandon.  Love your God and love your neighbor as yourself.  In so doing, we will triumph.

Yours in Christ,

Chris