Or does church say there’s really only one right way to live out biblical manhood and biblical womanhood, and it just happens to look exactly like Father Knows Best crossed with tonight’s UFC rage-fight?
Does the church offer rest to the souls of the neurodiverse? What about those who deal with chronic mental illness?
A few months ago, I started reading The Fourth Gospel, by John Shelby Spong. I’ve talked before about how Spong revolutionized my view of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well.
Spong showed me that the disciples of Jesus, these old Jewish guys, stopped defending their racial turf, their religious turf, their gender turf. They just opened the doors and let everybody in.
And it didn’t just stop with the woman at the well. They kept breaking the rules.
The dietary laws: gone.
The circumcision laws: gone.
The temple regulations: gone.
Jesus’ followers got it.
I don’t think we get it quite so much.
I think this is why 51% of us end up testing out as Pharisees instead of Jesus-followers.
We know this is true: it is so easy to follow a list of rules that says, “I love you, BUT... ”
This is also true: it is so hard and scary to follow the Love that opens its arms completely and simply says, “I love you” without condition.
To truly follow Love, we give up control.
We give up on outcomes.
We stop being Right, even if the Bible clearly says.
We honor the free will of others.
We allow God to be God, because we are not.
We acknowledge that Love is at work in the lives of others, just as it is in ours.
We simply trust that Love is Enough for all of us.
Let us all consider:
I think that would be a miracle, all over again, the same kind of miracle that Jesus made in the lives of a bunch of old Jewish guys who somehow (I was blind but now I see) found that a Samaritan woman was someone to be celebrated as an equal.
If Jesus could make that kind of miracle for those guys, back in the day, he can surely do that for us, too.
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