Can Christians get their groove back?

It wasn’t quite a speaker’s worst nightmare. because I wasn’t naked at the podium (at least not literally), but it was close enough for jazz. I stood all alone as guest speaker at The Pacific Gardens Mission on Chicago’s near South side. Before me was an audience about which I had been forewarned: That they were mostly there for the free meal that would be served as soon as the days annoying preacher was finished.

The only advice I had been given was to take an up-tempo tone in what was expected to be another vain attempt at keeping the local street people awake, let alone focussed. A previous preacher had commented that these guys have heard it all. There was nothing I could do to change things. Just go up there, do my best, and leave the rest to God. How could I, a white nonordained, housepainter from the suburbs hope to reach these hard-bitten denizons of the street?

But, it was happening; we were connecting. From my opening commentary on how "life sucks, but you don’t need someone like me to tell you that" had caught there attention. One by one eyes had opened and faces had locked on to my unconventional message. "If God is all powerful, then He has to be considered responsible for the terrible state of affairs in which we humans find ourselves. If that be the case, then He must also have taken that into consideration. Maybe, we haven’t fully understood what His plan on earth happens to be?"

Unfortunately, the resident pastor had also taken notice. From my opening words he had become more and more vexed by the latest speaker foisted upon him. He had his way of doing things, as he explained to me while escorting me from the room, and he brooked no deviation from it.

Finally, I gave him his opening. I had been sharing the pain of my divorce and separation from my daughters. Then I told of how my sixteen year old daughter had, for a year, kept the secret of my first grandson from me. She believed, helped along by her mother, that I would have been so angry with her that I would have never forgiven her. I used my message to her of how much I love her and would never allow anything to come between us as an allegory to how God love us and only our fear keeps us from communing with and being healed by Him of our pain. "That’s why we be suffering this shit..."

That was when it happened. The Pastor lept up and yelled out, "That’s enough of this. I’ll not have profanity in my building!" Suddenly I was naked before a crowd of strangers. But, strangely, cries of "No, let him speak," erupted from the gallery. I appealed to be allowed to finish, but he would not relent. I turned to the audience and finished with, "God be forgiving you. Come forward and be healed." Then, I turned and left.

As I awaited my fate in the anteroom, I heard one of the deacons comment on the men who were coming forward as a result of the altar call. There were quite a few of them. Despite, or maybe because of what had happened to me, men were answering the call. Then, the pastor left the proceedings to his crew and explained life to me as he ushered me to the lobby.

I would have been upset with the whole situation if it had not been such an allegory to the whole morass into which Christianity has found itself. Here I was having a positive effect with, what was to them, heresy. But, was it? The basic message was clear: The mercy and forgiveness taught by the historical Jesus. Whether or not anyone cares to think of him as God in man or man of God, his message was clear: Peace will result from selfless acts of mercy. If we do not learn to forgive one another, the entire planet will become one big Palestinian problem.

Maybe that’s why this planet was created this way -- to become a laboratory of mercy. Maybe that’s why God placed us all on these rails -- genetic rails that researchers further understand with each day that passes. Maybe that’s why the Christian "solution" came so late in the history of mankind -- to pose the question, "What about all those people who lived before?"

Face it, the "faith once delivered" was delivered at a time when the earth was flat, Hell was just below and Heaven just above the clouds, and the sun and stars revolved around us at the center of creation. Once Galileo began proving the contrary theories of Copernicus, the Christian world was stuck in the wrong groove. Maybe it never was in the proper groove from the beginning.