AMY LARSON
Staff Writer
I am a Spiritual Life Adviser this year, and it has been a really incredible experience. I love living with freshmen — they help me remember the excitement of being at college. Everything is new and fun, and they are very excited about being involved. It is really refreshing — they see things in such a different way.
Though it is quite an amazing experience to be constantly shown so many different ways to look at life, not all of these outlooks are positive. For instance, I vividly remember an experience one of my residents had with the church that showed me a viewpoint I had not considered before but now will never forget.
It began with one of my residents deciding she was going to get more involved in her church. She spent so much time talking to me about her plans. She was proud that, despite her shyness and inhibitions about stepping out to be a church volunteer, she was going to go through with it because she wanted to serve God in a new way.
I was so excited for her, so when she got home that night and came to talk to me I was eagerly waiting to hear about her new involvements. What I was not expecting was to meet a crying girl in my doorway. Apparently, when my friend told her church that she wanted to volunteer, they told her they did not need (or really even want) the contribution she could offer. Though I am certain they declined her offer in the nicest way they could, I cannot explain in a tiny column like this how much their words devastated my resident. After a long time of wrestling with where to dedicate her time, she had chosen the church, and the church had rejected her help.
What is worst, at least to me, is that my friend immediately felt like she was not a “good enough” Christian.
It is so odd to me that people would turn away someone seeking to serve, especially if one considers the people Jesus asked to lead. David, the man God made king in the Old Testament, was a liar, adulterer and murderer. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples and a man who led many to the Lord, publicly denied even knowing Jesus three times. If Jesus entrusted these people with leading down the path to God, why was my friend excluded? I cannot help but think that God’s endless, merciful love lets Him see people in terms of their potential, not their faults. If, as Christians, we are filled with this love, isn’t it time we begin to see people in this fashion too? We must meet people exactly where they are and see them for the incredible things God placed specifically into them. Brennan Manning said in his book “The Ragamuffin Gospel,” “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”
This is a powerful and beautiful statement to me because I feel like sometimes we have got that backwards. So many Christians attend church each Sunday and that is great, but it should not stop there. Church should be a safe place for the people we consider “sinners” — people searching for God, not just the people who have it all together (or at least have tricked themselves into believing they do). We must take a look at ourselves and wonder, “Do we, as the church, look like Jesus? Act like Jesus? Speak like Jesus? And, most importantly, do we love like Jesus?”
If not, we have a challenge before us. This challenge will stretch us greatly, but it is a challenge we must take on if we want to really call ourselves the “Christian” (Christ-like) church.
11-02-2006