If foul language is a serious offense in your book, stop here. It’s not worth offending people with a bad word just because I’m finally breaking my month-long blog silence. I promise I’ll post again soon. I’ll admit that, much to my mother’s dismay, I have developed a certain liking of the words that our culture has warped into being “bad,” because they can add emphasis that nothing else can. Oh well, my blog.
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Last night, my friend Ernie and I made a late night run to Whataburger. As we neared the Orange W of Greasy Goodness, we both groaned as we saw that the line of cars went around the building. Accepting the wait, we decided to wait inside so we would burn less gas and inhale less fumes. As we entered and joined the also lengthy indoor line, the cashier was just greeting the next customer in a very loud and unorthodox, yet rather jovial, way.
“Welcome to Whataburger, where we’re screwin’ up all kinds of shit tonight.”
The restaurant was quiet for a moment, while people took in this outburst. It was the late-night crowd, though, so we all took it in good humor. The place that had formerly had the low hum of a burger joint at midnight now buzzed with laughter and comments. A guy in front of Ernie and myself turned and said, “That kinda makes you wonder what you’re gonna get, doesn’t it?” We all laughed harder.
Eventually, we made through and sat down with an orange number tent labeled 30 to wait for Ernie’s food. I stuck with a drink - they don’t wear gloves when they make your food at Whataburger and I’m sometimes convinced I have a mild form of OCD. As we waited, I wondered aloud if this was part of what the church is missing - total, brutal honesty. I proposed a new welcome for the church I work with: “Welcome to Freedom Fellowship, where we’re screwin’ up all kinds of shit!”
This goes into my ongoing idea of church as a twelve step program, which I’ll continue to post on. This is the first step: universal confession or “Admiting that you have a problem.” Even better is the original wording that AA uses:
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Powerless. Just as alcoholics feel powerless over alcohol, just as the cashier expressed powerlessness over the shortcomings of herself and the establishment, so are we helpless when it comes to our bondage to decay and sin. “All have sinned,” and all that.
Think about what actually believing this would change about your church-going experience: No longer would there be distinctions between those who seem to have it all together and those who can’t even pretend anymore. Whether we’re drunkards, whores, liars, fags or anything else, we would accept that we all stand equal before God and each other. We’ve all screwed up and we’re all screwin’ up. No matter how far along we are in the healing process, we are all still in “recovery.” This is where all can find our belonging - in the admission of not doing right, not in the insistence that we are doing right.
Church then becomes as unpredictable and imperfect as we are, a place where we can freely and unashamedly admit weakness, because we actually believe that His power is made perfect in it. In true Ragamuffin spirit, mistakes are accepted and embraced jovially, because we know and are confident in what God has done in us and in what he can do in the world. But that’s step 2.