Open The Door

There is strength in diver­sity. Every orga­ni­za­tion that exists for very long starts hav­ing gate­keep­ers — peo­ple that selec­tively accept or reject oth­ers “for the good of the orga­ni­za­tion.” That was the very first prob­lem the early church encoun­tered. It over­came the prob­lem, but has had to over­come it again and again.

The Statue of Lib­erty is the mon­u­ment to open invi­ta­tions. Con­se­quently, there are major cities in Amer­ica that boast of nearly one-hundred first lan­guages. The con­flicts that are inevitable are resolved by hav­ing some sort of “meta-story” — a greater set of images and tales that bind diverse peo­ple together in the name of some higher calling.

God excludes the exclu­sivists. Sooner or later the gate­keep­ers find them­selves on the out­side. “The first become last and the last become first.” Per­son­ally, I do not join exclu­sive orga­ni­za­tions — not even polit­i­cal par­ties. My view of the church is an all-embracing uni­ver­sal one. Church growth works when peo­ple are allowed to share their tal­ents and where they can feel loved and accepted.

This is the oppo­site of how the world runs. Jesus told para­bles of ban­quets in which the invited guests snubbed the invi­ta­tion and their places were then filled with the peo­ple they had rejected. In short, God will have peo­ple if it takes scrap­ing them off the bot­tom (a sort of tongue-in-cheek para­ble). It has a W.C. Fields ring to it when he said he would not be a mem­ber of any club that would have him as a member.

The church belongs to the rejected. Its pri­mary mem­ber­ship require­ment is in not being wor­thy of being a mem­ber. You have to smile when you see God’s humor in this. For some rea­son, Deity is most at home with hon­est fail­ures than with pre­tend “good peo­ple” (what­ever those are). I cher­ish my church mem­ber­ship because of its grand para­dox: I don’t deserve to be in it, which is exactly what makes me feel most at home.

Reject­ing oth­ers is actu­ally a form of self-rejection. What­ever mon­ster I project onto oth­ers is appar­ently the mon­ster I have allowed to live inside of me. What­ever I reject about myself, I reject in oth­ers. In other words, I am my own worst gate-keeper.

So, open the door. Accept every­thing about your­self so you can accept oth­ers. That which gets on my last nerve is about my last nerve. You have to smile when you catch onto this…and then life gets a whole lot better.