We Come Broken

I love to hear our RUF campus minister, Rob Hamby, preach. I think it might have something to do with his faithful reminders of our need. Something about hearing that I'm needy just strikes a chord with me. My school, Furman, is full of beautiful, talented, amazing people who are broken and hurting and dying on the inside, although no one knows it. We're really good at masking who we actually are. While on the outside our students are excelling, achieving, and smiling, on the inside we're struggling to know who we are, why we're here, and where we can find some semblance of meaning for our empty lives.

I think this is not unique to RUF or to Furman, though. I think there's a WHOLE lot of this that goes on in our Churches. We look great. We look amazing, actually. We appear to have it all together. And when someone happens to come into our congregation who doesn't look or act or feel exactly like we do, we draw back a little bit. We become afraid. We all of a sudden become too busy to get involved. We even point our fingers. We stand in judgement, with our hands on our hips, while at the same time sweeping our own lusts and mistakes and struggles under the rug--all in an effort to keep up appearances. We want manageable lives, and more often than not, that doesn't include caring for broken people. It can be a messy job when we come face to face with scary things we don't know much about.

Rob said something the other night at RUF that rung deeply in me. He said, "The Church should be a place for deeply flawed people to seek help." Instead, though, we've made the Church a place for the good people, for the moral, and for the already-righteous. We don't leave room for sinners. We don't leave any space in our lives for those who recognize their need, when in fact, the ones who know they are sinners are in a better place than we are. It's easier to point in judgement than to admit we're all the same. We're all "deeply flawed" beyond human hope. The only hope we all have is the same hope in the same Jesus--the One who knows our hearts, our sins, and all our weaknesses and loves us enough to change us. I pray that we as the Church would come to understand that we've all fallen short, we've all failed to run the race with perseverance, and we've all had wicked idols we'd like to hide. None of us are pure. None of us appear clean before God. The difference is Jesus.

"The way to be a counter-culture is Jesus. The way to love each other well is Jesus. And the way the Church can be who She is for this dying world is Jesus. May all other affections die out, all other promises disappoint, and all other hopes fail. Maybe then we will collapse on Him again, as if for the first time, as we remember that He is the only one who can satisfy our ever restless souls."
~Derek Webb