Editor’s Note: This is one of two plenary sessions from SOLA Conference 2021. Find more resources and videos here.
In a defensive, divided, politically and socially hostile “cancel culture,” how can Christians live counter-culturally by loving others as Christ has loved us, even when we were his enemies? How can we become the kind of people who turn away wrath with the fruit of Christ’s gentleness (Proverbs 15:1)? In this message, Nashville pastor Scott Sauls will explore what a gentle answer can look like in our hearts, homes, churches, and world.
Below is a transcript of the plenary session. It has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the audio here.
Hello, brothers and sisters. My name is Scott Sauls. I’m from Nashville, Tennessee, where I serve as pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church. And it’s a privilege to be here with my friends at the SOLA Network. I understand there are a number of ministry leaders here as well as a number of students and others, especially in and around Southern California, and I always love coming to your beautiful state. Thank you for the invitation to do this.
I’ve been asked to speak on the subject of gentleness in a culture of outrage. What I thought I would do is start my talk with a recollection of an image that I saw on the internet about the year 2020. It was a construction site, and there were a handful of johnny-on-the-spot, portable restrooms lined up, and they were all on fire. And the caption to that image said, “If 2020 were a scented candle, that’s what the year 2020 would look like.”
There’s several words that we might think of if we were asked to nominate a word to be word of the year for 2020—words like “polarized,” “tribalized,” “radicalized,” “racialized,” “politicized,” “divided,” “outraged”—there are so many other words that we could think of. Another word that we might nominate for word of the year for 2020 would be “unprecedented.” That’s a word that so many people threw around. And if you’re like me, you’re probably looking forward to getting back to living in precedented times.
Living in Precedented Times
But I like to start this talk by making the strong suggestion that we do not live in unprecedented times. In fact, 75% of the world might say that Scott Saul’s experience of the pandemic is somewhere similar to what their imagination is around what their version of paradise would be like. It’s all relative, isn’t it? Over 75% of the world suffers much more than many of us in the Western Hemisphere have, even during the years 2020 and 2021. That’s not at all to belittle or diminish how hard it’s been during the pandemic, but it’s helpful to get perspective every time that we can.
And I think we could also go back to the earliest chapters of the Bible in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve decided they were going to go their own way. They were going to seek independence from God by eating the forbidden fruit. What happened immediately is that Eve turned on the serpent, which I suppose is okay. But after that, Adam turned against Eve, and he also turned against God and shifted blame. “The woman that you gave me, she made me do it.”
You have outrage, you have blame shifting, you have people covering themselves, you have the self-righteous dynamic, which is described in Luke 18:9, which describes those who trust in themselves that they are righteous and look down on other people with contempt. That dynamic started in Genesis 3. Then in Genesis 4, we have history’s first recorded episode of envy and history’s first recorded murder, when the son of Adam and Eve, Cain, murdered his brother out of envy.
Almost the entire Bible is written by people who were experiencing outrage and hostility. You have slaves, you have prisoners, you have people seeking asylum, you have people under persecution, you have people who are awaiting their own death at the hands of a violent government who gave us the Bible. There are only a small handful of books like the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and some of Proverbs that are written by people who are living in comfort, luxury, and not under a threat of violence. And even those people, especially in Ecclesiastes, have tumult and have disorientation of their own. These are not unprecedented times, but these are hard times. These are difficult times. These are outraged and outrageous times.
The Problem of Our Hearts
I think that social media, the ubiquity of the internet, and cable news have only served to amplify what has always been there in the human heart, and social problems and spiritual problems that have always preceded what’s in the human heart. And so there is one man, a very popular man, who dropped off the radar after his death for a number of years, who has come back. And he is popular again. And his name is Fred Rogers. I’m going to talk a little bit about Fred Rogers today. But first, what I’d like to do is read a couple of scriptures to frame the rest of my talk. And one I will just do from memory. It’s Proverbs 15:1, which reads: “A gentle answer turns away wrath.” And then the second scripture is in Matthew 11. It is Jesus declaring to His disciples, as he prays to His Father.
“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my father, and no one knows the son, except the Father. And no one knows the Father except the son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. And then he says to his disciples, and anyone who would listen, ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle, and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy. And my burden is light.'”
So, Fred Rogers. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was his program on the Public Broadcasting System. He was a nerdy, wiry, soft-spoken, gentle man, who ran this low-budget, kids show. In terms of personal transparency, Fred Rogers helped to raise me. I did not have what you would call a stable family of origin situation. And one of my anchors on almost a daily basis was to get to sit down and listen to Fred Rogers say through this TV screen. “I like you, and please, won’t you be my neighbor?”
He brought me comfort, he brought me a sense of love, a sense of protection, a sense of safety, even through the TV screen, very different than what current contemporary culture offers us. Current contemporary culture offers us tribes, offers us outrage, offers us partisanship, offers us “us against them,” offers us many, many, many dynamics between human communities that have not led to unity and peace.
Yes, there have been very important prophetic statements made during this time of ours that we are in, very important voices, pushing back on systemic problems, on social unrest, on certain in particular types of pain that are experienced by certain and particular groups of people. Those prophetic voices notwithstanding, we cannot figure out a way to get along.
There is no such thing as a partisan or a secular solution to a spiritual or a social problem. They don’t exist. And that’s why we are turning on each other—because we’re not running straight to the Scriptures—to the one who loved us, gave himself for us, to the one who took the hit, who took the outrage in our place, and absorbed it upon himself, bore our transgressions, the punishment that brought us peace with God and with each other, the punishment that tore down dividing walls not only between a holy God and sinful humanity, but also between different people groups, different cultures—that was all accomplished through Jesus Christ, and through Jesus Christ alone, who is the only answer to this dumpster fire of a moment that we are in right now. It cannot happen outside of him. It will not happen outside of him.
The Republicans will not solve it; the Democrats will not solve it. The Moderates, and people in the middle, will not solve it. Nobody will solve it, except Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. And the Church of Jesus Christ especially is the carrier of the Holy Spirit and the carrier of the message of Christ. The city on a hill, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, will we respond to that call? Or will we do otherwise? Will we be discipled by the world instead? Will we look to partisan platforms to give us our doctrine, to pundits as our profits, to politicians to be our Jesus, to the voting booth to be our sacrament, or will we get back to following Jesus? That is our question, today. There’s no other way to heal from this outrage. There’s no other way to be instruments of peace in a divided world.
I hope you’re with me. If you are, let’s go back to Mr. Rogers. There’s a famous documentary released about his life just a few years ago, and it went viral. Then Tom Hanks starred in a movie. I suspect that much of the art, creativity, screenplay, and casting came out of this very city of Los Angeles and the surrounding regions. It was a wonderful, remarkable gift and treasure, especially in a time such as this. His renewed popularity, I believe, is an indicator of how people are really feeling about the current climate we’re in.
The Eighth “I am” Statement
I believe there is a silent majority that is mostly anxious, mostly afraid of being attacked, labeled, caricatured, perhaps even canceled. Everybody is on eggshells right now. And Mr. Rogers represents a kindness, a forgiveness, a humility, and a grace, that we see in the New Testament. Do you remember how Paul introduces so many of his letters with the words, “Grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ?”
Did you know that “Grace to you” was a standard Greek salutation, or Gentile salutation, in letter writing in those times, and that “Peace to you” was a standard Jewish or Hebrew salutation? Paul is being subversive in putting one of the primary hostilities that existed during his time during people groups. There were racial implications, sociopolitical implications. There were all kinds of minority-majority implications in Paul’s simple statement, “Grace and peace to you”—Jew and Gentile from you, political left and political right to you, rich and poor to you, male and female to you—”from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” He’s so subversive in that way.
Paul, the Pharisee of all Pharisees, who because of the mass message of reconciliation, and because Christ had torn down the dividing wall between a holy God and Saul of Tarsus, who had once been a persecutor of the church, now is the ambassador of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentile world, if you can believe that.
Fred Rogers’ favorite three words were “I like you.” I like you. He treated every person he encountered with dignity because he discovered what the young Auggie Pullman—fictitious character who represents so many of us in the book and the movie, “Wonder,” said at the end of the story, “Be kind, because every person you meet is fighting a hard, hidden battle.” Every person you meet is fighting that battle. You might say that Fred Rogers represented the aroma of the eighth “I am” statement made by Jesus Christ.
Wait, I thought there were only seven “I am” statements in John’s Gospel: “I am the bread of life,” he said, “I am the light of the world, the door of the sheep. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the good shepherd, I am the way the truth and the life; I am the vine.” There was also the “I am” statement that Matthew recorded. “I am gentle and lowly in heart,” Jesus said. “And because of that anyone who comes to me will find rest for their souls.”
“I like you.” I wonder if Matthew especially remembered that because Matthew was accustomed to people not liking him. Matthew was accustomed to an isolation that he had created for himself by virtue of the profession—the privilege, and the separation from the rest of the people that he chose when he chose to be a tax collector, when he chose to put himself into the pocket of the Roman government, when he chose to conflate his life with partisan politics, when he chose to get into bed with power—instead of laying down power to serve his neighbor. When he chose the Nietzschean way instead of the Jesus way, when he chose the will to power over the will to love, when he chose the Darwinian way, where the strong eat the weak instead of the way that says the meek will inherit the earth. And glory comes through weakness, and resurrection comes after death to oneself.
He chose the way that compelled him—that compels so many even today—to deny their neighbors, take up their comforts, and follow their dreams. Instead of living in a counterculture way of denying oneself, taking up a cross and following Jesus, perhaps the isolation that Matthew had created for himself attracted him and compelled him especially to the message, “I am gentle and lowly, come to me, and I will give you rest.” How many times do you think Matthew heard those words, “Come to me, and I will give you rest?” Maybe only once in his life, but that’s all it took. That’s all it took.
The Fruit of Gentleness
With respect to the gentleness of Jesus and of Fred Rogers, the surprise is that there was some anger behind it all. This is where the prophetic fire and the prophetic spirit comes into play. The gentleness of Christ, the priestliness of Christ, and the prophetic fire of Christ do not cancel one another out—they complete one another. Neither is complete without the other. I wrote a book and released it last summer. It released on blackout Tuesday. If you remember that day, we canceled all promotions, we went silent, from the day that we released the book, for a good solid couple of weeks. That book is called A Gentle Answer: Our ‘Secret Weapon’ in an Age of Us Against Them. And when people ask me about the book who have not read it yet, they look through the table of contents. And they express curiosity about the title of one specific chapter. It’s Chapter 5, where it talks about how gentle people do anger well. Gentleness and anger, kindness and severity, do not cancel one another out—they complete each other. Both the Psalms and Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, if you go straight back to the original Hebrew in the Psalms or the original Greek in Ephesians, you will see that the imperative is used. It does not say, “In your anger, do not sin” like some of our English translations portray. It says, “Be angry.” It’s a command. Christian, be angry, and sin not.
Those are curious words. But anger is a lot like fire. Those of you who live along the California coastline understand what a raging fire is like. You understand because you’ve seen so much of the gorgeous landscape decimated by wildfires. There is such a thing as an unrighteous fire—a raging fire that can bring down a house or destroy a livelihood. It can cause irreparable damage to human skin; it can cause wildfires.
But there’s also such a thing as righteous fire. Righteous fire cooks bacteria out of our food and kills viruses that are lodged in our food so that we will not get sick. Righteous fire keeps us warm in the wintertime. And, of course, you wouldn’t understand that as well in Southern California as they might—as they do—understand that in New York, especially in cities like Buffalo, or Canada, or places like Alaska, which are closer to the North Pole, where a furnace is absolutely necessary for survival, and fire is absolutely necessary for a furnace to function properly. Fire, the righteous kind, can create ambiance around a fire pit or a fireplace or candlelight for a gathering of friends or for a romantic evening. So there is raging fire, and there is righteous fire.
Do you remember when Jesus went all Bobby Knight in the temple? You remember Bobby Knight, the basketball coach who, when he was upset with a call from the referee, would pick up a chair and hurl it across the basketball court in anger. That’s not the kind of anger that Jesus expressed in the temple. It looked a lot like that, but it came from a much more pure, much more holy, much more righteous, and blameless place.
So Jesus was grieved that there were people who dared to step into the court of the Gentiles of all places and set up shop to create a busy environment so that the Gentiles, in the only area where they were allowed, which was the periphery of the temple, did not have a space where they could experience silence and solitude in the presence of God. Because there were Jews, who also had their place, the center of the temple, and then the second layer of the temple, all of which were on the inside, all of which Gentiles did not have access to—those were the protected spaces.
So, the Jews invaded the Gentile space, invaded the minority space—the outsider space—ignored all of those commands about gleaning on the periphery, and leaving nourishment on the periphery for outsiders so that they could glean in the name of love and be nourished. No, they set up their busy shops to monetize the worship experience to line their own pockets. Jesus was filled with righteous anger, and he flipped tables in the temple because of that.
In John 11, there is again another English translation that is softened from the original language (I’m not sure why). So many English translations say that Jesus was deeply moved in spirit. Maybe we’re afraid of Jesus’s anger, maybe we were afraid of the fire of Christ, so much so that we might even compromise in our translations to protect ourselves from the discomfort that comes when we know that our Lord and Savior gets furious. He got furious with death. Furious, like a raging bull about to go into battle. That’s the meaning of that word in John 11.
He got furious in the later chapters of Matthew, so much so that he used words—words of condemnation—to bullies, especially those who use religion to bully and exclude and attack others. Words like “hypocrites,” “whitewashed tombs,” “blind guides,” “fools,” “sons of hell,” “wicked,” “negligent,” “merciless,” “greedy,”—he got angry Jesus lost his cool, without ever losing his character. He was a lamb; he was a lion. He was kind; he was severe. He was gentle toward the weak; he was a defender of the weak—all at the same time.
The following is one of my most treasured passages in Scripture because I’m a man who carries a lot of guilt and shame. I have had all of my life this feeling that I’m not enough, that I don’t measure up, that I never will be, and that I will never be complete. Of course, there are a lot of lies that support those feelings, but they’re those feelings. That’s my hard, hidden battle that I carry with me. I’m always thinking that I’ve got to perform, that I’ve got to achieve, and that I’ve got to succeed in order to be validated, in order to matter, in order for my life to count.
In comes a very ashamed woman. She barges into a dinner party that’s hosted by a group of Pharisees at the home of Simon the Pharisee. It’s in Luke 7. The scholars believe she was a prostitute. And as soon as she walked in, what does she do but pull out three of the primary tools of her trade as a prostitute: her lips, her perfume, and her hair. And she begins to tend to Jesus’s dirty feet with those three tools of her trade, by anointing his feet with perfume, by kissing his feet with her lips, and by washing his feet with her hair. And the Pharisees, the smug religious bullies, said if he knew what kind of person this woman is—that she is a sinner. But he doesn’t know. Clearly, he doesn’t know because he’s associating with her—he’s receiving this from her—so he clearly cannot be a prophet.
And then what Jesus does is he turns to the Pharisees, and he goes all Bobby Knight on them. He says, “Do you see this woman?” Woman. She’s a person, not a thing. She’s a she—not an it. Do you see her? I see her. She has not done anything but express a beautiful picture of love. Yes, her expressions may be culturally unorthodox. But they’re beautiful. But you—you have not shown me a shred of hospitality since the moment I walked into your house. You have the whole Bible memorized, perhaps just like Satan does, just like the demons do who believe, but also shudder because though they may have it all memorized, they’re not submitted to it. They’re not surrendered to it.
They didn’t hear when Augustine was asked the question—what are the top three virtues of Christianity?—they didn’t hear or at least his answer didn’t sink in when he said the top three virtues of Christianity are humility, humility, and humility. That at my best, I’m much more like a prostitute than I am like Jesus Christ, which is why I need him so much, which is why I never outgrow my need for his grace, for his mercy, for his tenderness, for his care. For his words, “I like you,” that are all often said in spite of my dislike for him and for his ways, to my own shame.
When Jesus unloaded his righteous anger, his righteous fire, toward the Pharisees at that dinner party, they probably felt like it was outrage. They probably felt like it was an attack. She felt like it was gentleness. In the same moment, the same instance, one party feels attacked, the other party feels protected. That’s often how the anger and the gentleness of Christ work together.
It happened in John 8, where the woman is caught in the act of adultery. Do you ever wonder why they don’t drag the man who’s caught in the act of adultery as well, to shame him publicly as well, to destroy and cancel him as well, to reduce him as well to the very worst thing that they can think of that he’s done, which is what we love to do? We love to reduce people, especially them, the people that we utter, we like to reduce them—to the very worst thought about them, the very worst thing that they may or may not have done. We like to reduce them to the things that they’ve been accused of. Even if we have no evidence that there’s truth to the accusation, we like to reduce people and say, “That’s the whole picture of who they are.”
Jesus never did that. With the woman caught in the act of adultery, he saw a human being who had gotten stuck, who was broken, and who is now exposed and ashamed. And all the men, they’re ready to kill her. And they say, “Lord, the Scriptures say that a woman who is caught in the act of adultery shouldn’t be killed should be put to death. What say you?” And Jesus’s answer was, “Let the person here who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.” Then they all dropped their stones, and they all walked away because they knew that they were not qualified. For she would be put to death, and they would need to be put to death as well. And then this woman is left with the only man in the group who was, in fact, without sin. And he never picks up a stone. Instead, he looks at her and says, “I do not condemn you. Now leave your life of sin.”
Oh, he cares about sexual ethics. Oh, he cares about what the Bible says about sex and marriage. He cares deeply about those things. He created those things; he designed those things. He doesn’t want a sharpie to be taken to the Mona Lisa any more than he wants our distorted, expressive, individualist, put our feelings and put our culture and whatever our culture is saying today over the scriptures instead of putting them under the scriptures. Jesus has no patience for that either.
But, before he gets to sexual ethics, he says to her, “I do not condemn you.” That’s our starting point. “I do not condemn you. Now, go leave your life of sin.” On the basis of that. If you reverse the order of those two sentences, you lose Christianity, you lose the gospel. You get Phariseeism.
Then there’s Zacchaeus. Just like Matthew, the entire town of Jerusalem thinks he’s an S.O.B. And Jesus calls him a son of Abraham. “Today I’m coming to your house, Zacchaeus.” One would imagine that’s the first time in a long time that Zacchaeus had ever had anybody come over to his home. In all likelihood, Zacchaeus’s home was a lonely and isolated place. Maybe he had a dog, and maybe he had a fishbowl or something else. But he, too, was a lonely man. So lonely that he climbed up a tree as the crowd gathered. He’s isolated; he’s all alone. And Jesus knows his name. “I’m coming to your house today Zacchaeus.” And immediately, it transformed his life. “Anybody I’ve defrauded, I’m going to give him five times as much as if I’m taking. $1, I’m going to give them $5 back. Furthermore, I’m going to give over half of what I have for the poor.” The gentleness of Christ, my friends, changes people. It transforms people. It makes people new.
Do you know that Jesus even referred to Judas as a friend? As Judas is in the act of betraying Him, Jesus is taking no pleasure in what’s about to happen to Judas. Jesus knows that Judas is about to go hang himself in shame, instead of running to Jesus, as Peter would later do for redemption and forgiveness and grace and a new job to do and a new calling and a new commission and a new fresh hope. Jesus knew that the scriptures would be fulfilled that the son of perdition would perish forever. But he took no pleasure in that. The last word that Judas would hear from the lips of Jesus was “friend” as he went to his own peril. That’s the love of Christ.
Cancel Culture versus Christ Culture
How does this apply to us? Canceling and censoring—these are generally bad ideas. Canceling and censoring. I know they come from different places, from some places, they’re places of pain. We don’t know what to do with our pain. And so we go on the attack. For others, it’s just another occasion for self-righteousness. It’s another occasion to try to win at the Nietzschean, Darwinian game. It’s not the Jesus way. There is something bigger, something more significant, and something more lasting and meaningful and of God than a mere transfer of power.
That’s all we want. We want to protect our power from being transferred to somebody else, or we want power to transfer so we’ll have it. That’s so reductionistic. And again, there’s no such thing as a secular solution or a partisan solution to a spiritual problem or to a social problem. Only the gospel can heal such things.
Canceling and censoring. These are a fruit of a hyper-political politicized culture. Again, turning party platforms into our doctrines, pundits into our profits, politicians into our saviors. The party spirit, brothers and sisters—this is whether you’re coming from the red state left, the red state right, or the blue state left—the party spirit is nothing more and nothing less than repackaged Phariseeism. It is a way for us to justify ourselves as we exercise the natural religion of the human heart, which is self-righteousness. We need a different kind of righteousness. Not one that comes from the self, not one that comes from our tribe. Not one that comes from our culture, but a righteousness that Luther called an alien righteousness that comes to us from the outside, from God himself, who reckons and declares as righteous those who trust Jesus Christ by faith alone, and nothing else. There’s no law you can add to that.
You are no more saved if you become woke; you are no more saved if you become anti-woke. You are no more saved if you move further to the right or to the left. In fact, you may reveal yourself to be less saved than you think you are if you conflate your religion with any form of party spirit. The gospel is a ministry of reconciliation, not of division. It is Jesus who divides, not us. We are not smart enough or wise enough to know where the division should happen for the glory of God; only Jesus knows. His is a ministry of reconciliation and peace.
And yet again, prophetic zeal is legitimate. There is such a thing as raging anger. Raging anger is unrighteous; it attacks people. Righteous anger is righteous; it attacks problems. And as Martin Luther King Jr. taught us, righteous anger, as it attacks problems, also has the ability to take the people who are causing the problems and win them over to join you in attacking the problems. That’s his appeal, in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to White moderate ministers like myself: to stand up for the least of these, to stand up for the weak, to be a voice for those who have no voice in your circles of influence and power.
We all agree that racism is wrong. We all agree that othering the other is wrong. We all agree that Jews and Gentiles, and slave and free, and male and female, are to come together as one in Christ Jesus such that Jews and Gentiles live as brothers and sisters instead of mortal enemies, such that slave and free. That dynamic doesn’t even exist anymore because Onesimus and Philemon are living now as brothers, instead of with this power dynamic. Male and female as well.
Did you ever notice how aggressive Jesus is about platforming women in a culture where that was ridiculous and unheard of, where a woman’s testimony wouldn’t even be accepted in a court of law? Where Roman businessmen would travel and write a letter home—this is a true anecdote—he’d write a letter home to his pregnant wife and say to her, if it’s a boy, keep it, if it’s a girl, throw it out? That’s the kind of culture they lived in.
And Jesus says, “No more. The first eyewitness of my resurrection is going to be a woman. And she’s going to be the apostle of the apostles. And she’s not just going to be a woman—she’s going to be a woman who used to have demons. She’s going to be the kind of woman that mothers and fathers tried to protect their children from when they saw her in public. They would run from her. That’s who I’m choosing. The least, the overlooked, the marginalized, the shamed, the scolded—those are the people that I’m going to platform. People with disabilities and special needs—those are the people I’m going to platform.” Blessed are the meek, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, they will inherit the earth.
“Christianity is a fighting religion,” C.S. Lewis said. “It thinks God made the world,” and “also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on putting them right again.” It is Christian distress—and by distress, I mean emotions—that are expressed in the Psalms, which is the book where God teaches us how to pray. Emotions such as anger, hurt, loneliness, fear, sadness, guilt, and shame, expressed in healthy ways in the same way that Jesus expressed anger. Those feelings, that distress, that you and I feel about the wrongs that exist in the world, about all of the othering that has happened since the beginning of time, that tires us so—and especially my Asian American brothers and sisters—that tire you so: Those emotions are there, not because there is something wrong with you, but because there is something right with you.
It is the prophetic tenderness of Christ in you that feels deeply when things are not the way they are meant to be, and it speaks out. It was Christian distress over disease and death that led Christians to invent the hospital. It was Christian distress about unformed minds that led Christian ministers and laypeople to found every Ivy League University except for just one of them. It was Christian distress about orphaned homeless children that led George Mueller to start the orphan care movement, Christian distress over slavery that led John Newton, former slave owner turned Christian and then turned pastor, to get into the ear of William Wilberforce, also a Christian in Parliament, who alone fought the fight for abolition in Parliament and won. It was Christian distress about racial inequality that led Dr. King to give his life for civil rights in America. It is Christian distress that leads my dear friend Christine Kane, who lives right up the road, to fight against the trafficking industry—the human trafficking industry—all over the world. It was Christian distress that led Mother Teresa to look a sitting United States President and Vice President in the eye at a National Prayer Breakfast and say, “Stop killing your babies and give them all to me.” Christian distress gets things done in God’s world.
Our heritage as Protestant Christianity, as Protestant Christians, started with Christian protest. Protest-ant. Luther nailing those 95 theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg, protesting the way that church leaders were exploiting the weak, the unassuming, the trusting congregants, to line their own pockets. But never at the expense of love. Never at the expense of love because remember righteous anger attacks problems—it wins people.
Remembering the Eighth “I am” Statement
I’ll finish with a story from my own ministry, where a man shows up at our church. He arrives late; he’s reeking of nicotine. You can smell him from about 20 feet away. He’s not wearing what people call “Sunday best.” Looks like he’s probably never been in a church before. And a man comes behind me in the middle of the singing, taps me on the shoulder, and he’s carrying a big study Bible. It looks like it’s never been opened—still has all the shiny stuff. And he’d been carrying that Bible to church for a while. Sometimes carrying a big study Bible is about something other than loving God, especially when you do it in public.
He taps me on the shoulder and he says, “You see that guy over there?” And I said, “Yes, I do see him. ” “Do you know him?” “No, I’ve never met him. It looks like he’s new to the church.” “Yes, it does.” Church guy says to me, “He’s a distraction to my worship. He’s behaving so offensively. Look at how he’s dressed. Can you smell the nicotine? Do you notice the needle streaks on his arms? I’m going to give him a talking to after the service.” And I said, “Please don’t do that.”
And then what I did was, I went and found Mark. Mark had been through recovery just a couple of years ago from a legalized opium addiction where he was chasing oxycodone down with Jack Daniels and got himself in a mess and needed to go to rehab. He healed up and became one of the best church elders I’ve ever worked with. I said, “This is somebody that Mark needs to meet.” Turns out that this church visitor’s name was Bill; the streaks on his arm were from a long-standing heroin addiction, and the people at the recovery place—he’d been sober for one month—the people at the recovery place said, “You need to find some religion because if you find some religion, that’ll increase your chances of not relapsing.” And so he found us. He found a friend in Mark, and he found a friend in our church community.
But I left that day really frustrated. I left asking myself, what do you call it when somebody trades a heroin addiction in for a nicotine addiction? I call it sanctification. I don’t call it offensive. I call it sanctification. I call it growth. I call it progress.
Then I started giving God some advice. I don’t recommend doing this. I said, “God, do you know what would make the church better? If you would just get rid of all the church guys. Get the church guys out of the church, and church can be church, like church is meant to be.” Because I’m Presbyterian, I’m not allowed to hear the voice of the Lord. But I felt the voice of the Lord. The voice of the Lord quoted none other than Frederick Nietzsche to me. This is the quote that came into my mind, from the man who said that God is dead. And the quote was paraphrased: “In your efforts to defeat the monster, make sure you don’t become the monster.”
I was swiftly becoming an unloving Pharisee toward unloving Pharisees, which is a Pharisee. There’s such a thing as a grace Pharisee—we can take anything, even beautiful, good, true, lovely things, and turn them into an occasion and even a platform for our own self-righteousness, for our own will to power. Jesus says, “Nuh-uh.”
You remember that parable in Luke 15? It’s not the parable of the prodigal son. It’s the parable of God the Father, who welcomes train wrecks—like the prostitute, like the junkie—who walked into church, like the church guy. He reaches out both to the prodigal younger brother and to the elder brother, whose heart ran a million miles away from home even though he never left home physically. And he says to both of them, “Come in; all I have is yours. Let’s celebrate. What was lost has been found.”
Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister. I like to claim him. We like to claim him along with Tim Keller, Francis Schaffer, Joni Eareckson Tada, John Perkins, Alex Jun, Mark Twain, Neil Armstrong, and Sheryl Crow, among others. Teasing there a little bit—but he was a Christian.
His kindness and gentleness came from the eighth “I am” statement. He was inspired by that, but he was also troubled and distressed, which was the secret sauce behind Mr. Rogers’s kindness. Because as a young Fred Rogers, he was bullied as a child for being overweight. He was bodyshamed by his peers and had no adults step in to defend him. And at some point along the way, he made a promise to himself—a vow to himself. “I will never, under any circumstances, as long as and as far as it depends on me, allow a child to be made to feel like I was made to feel, if I can help it.” That’s how Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was born.
As Ann Voskamp says, “Only speak words that make other souls stronger.” Only speak words that make other souls stronger. We live in a culture that is filled with hostile othering words. Whoever says, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” didn’t have a clue, or was in very deep denial. Words can cut us deeply and words can lift us up. Words can encourage; words can put courage into us.
It is words that put the galaxies into existence; it is words that called Lazarus out of the dead. It is words that give us the resource, the power, and the vision, for what it will take to do what no secular theory can do, and no secular vision can do, and no partisan vision can accomplish. Dividing walls brought down, first, between the holiness of heaven in the sinfulness of humanity, and next, between hostile people groups. For he is the one who is gentle and humble in heart, who gives rest of the souls.
He’s also a first-century, Middle Eastern, dark-skinned, economically depressed savior, who never spoke a word of English. It is on the shoulders of that Middle Eastern, poor man that my hope rests and that your hope rests, over here at the place that he called the ends of the earth.
The United States of America is not, never has been, and never will be, the center of the Christian story. That’s the Middle East. That’s where our hope comes from. What a kind-hearted God, what a kind-hearted Savior, that he would include the likes of us. If that is not enough to drive us to create cultures of inclusion and embrace amongst ourselves, I don’t know what will. May it be so among us, brothers and sisters. Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we thank you that you did not send an abrasive Savior, that you did not send a savior whose core value is to the other. You didn’t create a savior—he created us; he created the universe. You sent a savior who would break down dividing walls of every kind. And Lord, it’s not lost on us—and it’s a sacred thing—that in order to accomplish the dividing walls torn down, he had to be divided and separated and severed and cut off from you, Lord.
Thank you, Jesus, for going through that for our sake. Thank you, Father, for being willing to send your son into the abyss so that you could rescue us from that same abyss. Father, would you make us as the church, the light of the world, the city on a hill, the salt of the earth, that you’ve called us and privileged us to be? We need your Holy Spirit. We need a daily, moment-by-moment awareness of the gospel, and of the one who loved us and gave himself for us in order for that to happen. That may it happen Lord, we pray, through your power and your grace. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
For more resources from SOLA Conference 2021, click here.