The Barefoot Evangelist

Somewhere along the way, a lot of Christians learned that God is perpetually disappointed in us. God is apparently sitting somewhere above the clouds with arms crossed, watching us fail to pray enough, read our Bibles enough, attend church enough, give enough, believe correctly enough, or behave well enough. We have taken “God so loved the world” and somehow turned it into “God is putting up with the world, but honestly, God expected better.” And then we wonder why people are anxious about faith.

But seriously: who told you God was disappointed in you? Because when I look at Jesus, I have trouble finding that God. Jesus certainly challenged people. He got angry. He overturned tables. He called religious leaders hypocrites and occasionally said things that would get him removed from most respectable church committees. But the people who had been told they were unacceptable to God? Jesus kept moving toward them. He ate with them. Touched them. Talked theology with them. Let them argue with him. He treated them as people worthy of dignity before they had done anything to earn it.

We should probably notice who received the sharpest criticism from Jesus. It wasn’t the people struggling to get their lives together. It wasn’t the people with complicated relationships or questionable reputations. It wasn’t even the people who couldn’t quite figure out what they believed. Again and again, Jesus reserved his strongest words for religious people who were absolutely certain they knew who God approved of. They had rules. They had boundaries. They had Scripture to back themselves up. And Jesus kept wandering across those boundaries and ruining everything.

Somewhere Christianity got very good at manufacturing shame and then offering itself as the cure. First we convince people that they are fundamentally unacceptable, and then we tell them exactly what they must believe, say, do, or become so that God will finally love them. That’s a remarkably effective religious business model. I’m just not convinced it looks much like Jesus. Grace isn’t much of a gift if we spend our lives terrified that God is waiting to take it back.

That doesn’t mean nothing matters. Love matters enormously. Justice matters. How we treat our neighbours matters. What we do with power, money, privilege, bodies, creation, and one another matters. Jesus didn’t invite people into lives without responsibility; he invited them into God’s community, where loving God and loving our neighbour reshapes how we live. But transformation born from being loved is profoundly different from obedience born from fear that we might otherwise be rejected.

So perhaps the next time that little religious voice whispers that God must be disappointed in you, ask where the voice came from. A parent? A preacher? A church? The media? A culture that makes money by convincing us we’re not thin enough, successful enough, attractive enough, productive enough, happy enough, or good enough? A theology built around keeping people frightened enough to behave themselves? We absorb an astonishing number of voices telling us we don’t measure up, and sometimes we put God’s name on them. But that voice might not be God at all. The story Christianity claims to tell is not about humanity desperately trying to become lovable enough for God. It is about a God who keeps coming toward us, stubbornly and scandalously, insisting that love was there first.

And if that makes some religious people uncomfortable, well, Jesus had some experience with that too.