Dear Jesus,
I’m not sure how to say this, but looking around I don’t think this Christianity thing is working. I think we’ve lost the plot here.
It feels like something critical has been misplaced over the last two thousand years or so; a slow but sure whisper down the lane divergence from your heart, that no longer resembles you much at all but has appropriated your name.
I’ve tried really hard to reconcile it all, tried to somehow connect the disparate dots in a way that still makes any sense, but I can’t. I can’t find a path that leads from you to this thing anymore and it’s got me shaken.
It can’t be of you and be this hateful, can it?
It can’t be in your image and be so toxic.
It can’t be of love and be so very weaponized.
It can’t be Good News if it’s such terrible news for so many.
Some days I think it’s me, that I’ve gotten it all wrong and that maybe this is what you imagined we would be when your feet were on the planet; that this would be the Church to represent you, that this is what our shared testimony in the world would be. Maybe this was the plan and I’m the disconnect, I’m the outlier.
Other days the crushing weight deep in the center of my chest feels like your very holy discontent, telling me to push hard against it all, because this is not good enough or loving enough or redemptive enough to bear your name. On those days the fight feels worth it, even though it feels decidedly uphill and paved with stones and thorns and serpents.
It’s exhausting having to daily overcome so much of your people just to try and reach you, to feel like whatever there is true and good is so deeply buried beneath the jagged rubble of bitterness and violence, that finding you again is a fool’s endeavor. It’s a precarious existence to try and stand on something that feels so very unsteady. I’m out of ideas here and I’m tired. I think lots of us are.
I’m not sure what I’m asking. If this is a prayer it’s admittedly a pretty lousy one, but right now it’s the best I can do.
I guess I just hoped that two thousand years would yield more progress for us.
I hoped by now we’d have a faith that wasn’t so hurtful to so many.
I somehow expected you’d be clearer to see, for me and for those who are searching for you.
I was hoping that it would be so very obvious when something was of you, that it would break through every hateful, fearful, petty, self-centered, counterfeit thing we fashion—and we’d all be able to see it.
I want less discord.
I want less damage.
I want a Church without malice.
I want a bigger plot of common ground for the Left and the Right.
I want a table that makes space for more than it does right now.
I want a Christianity that actually does the reconciling work you claimed it would do.
I want it to be more obvious what loving our neighbor looks like.
I guess at the end of the day I just want Christians not to be so horrible out there—and you’re the one who is supposed to help take away the horrible.
This doesn’t seem to be working. Help us make it work.
