christian idioms, part iii

Confession:  I've definitely gotten worse at cocktail parties since college.  One of the few similarities between my wife's work in medicine and mine in education is the tendancy to become clinically detached.  It can be incredibly difficult to give context to the harsh realities that we see every day, and even harder not to become a political advocate in trying to explain them. 

I think that we face the same problem in our faith as Christians.  It is incredibly difficult to provide the context necessary for people to be able to hear that they are screwed up, and not take offense.  My pastor has recently described that context as a gentle environment with "more gospel + more safety + more time."

Shit Christians say, like, "The church is a hospital for sinners, not a country club for saints," is incredibly unhelpful in shaping this gentle environment.  Yes it is good that we don't self-identify as pious moralists who want to exclude others.  But the idea of a hospital implies that we are getting better - that we're working towards discharge, that we will leave better than those who didn't come - and this is still moralistic.  Or at least know-it-all.  Perhaps a better analogy is an asylum.  Or a halfway house.  There's no expectation that we will get better.  In fact, there should probably be some social stigma.  Which is exactly why we throw ourselves into the shelter of the gospel. 

"May God preserve me from a church of saints.  I want to be in the church of the faint-hearted, the feeble and ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who cry to God for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins."  (Martin Luther)