Unapologetically Merciful

As crazy as it may sound, preaching the extravagant acceptance, mercy, love, and compassion of Jesus can get you in trouble in religious circles. We can teach and preach rule-following all day long and nobody bats an eye. But you start preaching God’s extravagant grace, you start preaching our call to live out that extravagant grace in our lives, in our relationships, people will turn against you.

I’m okay with that now. I don’t care anymore what people think about me. I don’t care if I’m criticized, ostracized, or condemned by people for believing, preaching, and living out – through God’s help – our call to radical compassion in lieu of strict, rigid, unbending rule following.

Here’s why. The loudest voices in Christianity today, some of the most prominent voices, the voices that are “leading” so many people are also some of the meanest, most cruel, most judgmental, and most condemning; and it has had a profound and major effect on how Christians live and how they are perceived by others.

This is not the faith taught or modeled by Jesus. It is a direct reflection of how so many Christians have gotten things so very, very wrong. Cruelty, meanness, harsh judgment, an insistence of strict rule-following instead of grace have become the norm in Christian circles, and I won’t have any part of it; even if it causes me to lose friends.