The book I am currently reading is called If God Is Love by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. I don't know if this exactly fits the topic, but the excerpt came to mind when I read these questions... "My insistence that all come to God in the way I'd come to God [through Christianity] was egotistical and lazy. It allowed me to ignore the rich extent of God's revelation to people in cultures and religions across the world. Religious elitism robbed me of the benefits of God's work in millions of lives. Though I remain a Christian, one who has come to know God through the life and teachings of Jesus, I've accepted my proper place as a seeker after truth rather than the possessor of all wisdom. My curiosity is growing. Gracious religion isn't an unbending allegiance to a narrow orthodoxy. It is about approaching our life with God and others in a spirit of gentleness, humility, and openness. These tools become the means by which God fits us for citizenship in the world of God's kingdom. It is about being less committed to a rigid, self-concerned institution and more concerned about authenticity, integrity and faith. This faith is not about believing the right things about God, but about trusting God to remake us in God's image, full of grace and truth. Its goal is not dogmatic certainty, but making our peace with a great mystery - that God's simple truth is revealed in a multiplicity of forms. All of these forms reflect a common conviction - that we are most like God when we love each other." (p. 136-137) -Holly-

How do we get beyond this kind of bumper-sticker flippancy, which seems too often to stand in the stead of any actual liberal/progressive Christian "stand"? We shy away from drawing lines in the sand, defining ourselves by the ways we and our faith are different from conservative/fundamentalist Christians and their faith. The Jesus we profess belief in, the Jesus we see in the Bible (if we read it), drew some important lines in the sand: Love everyone. Help those in need--feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, embrace the marginalized. Be born from above; turn away from acquisition for its own sake, and instead see wealth as a blessing to share. These lines Jesus drew might be better defined as anti-lines; rather than providing a neat set of rules about right & wrong, in & out, saved & damned, black & white, sheep & goats, Jesus tells his followers to color outside the lines. He invited the despised and oppressed--tax collectors, non-Jews, the very poor, the physically and mentally ill--into radical trust that freed them from the barriers imposed on them by those in power; and he invited those in power into radical trust that giving up their power over others would free them, too. So I don't think it's as simple as coming up with a "liberal list" of ins and outs--that would seem to perpetuate the lines and barriers and lopsided distributions of power and justice which Jesus asks us to transcend. Certainly there are choices and actions that are obviously wrong--e.g., murder, rape, sexual exploitation of children--and it would be absurd to suggest that we cannot hold the perpetrators of such violent acts accountable (that's why we have a criminal justice system). The danger lies in overgeneralization and fear--declaring whole categories of people unworthy of inclusion in the Church because they are different from us. Different skin colors, different cultures, different gender identities, different experiences of God..."otherness" challenges the comfort we find in sameness and majority. Rather than relying on societal dividing lines, we need to heed Jesus' example and ignore them, practicing radical trust and living into faith that welcomes all comers, celebrates diversity and its ability to enrich everyone's experience of God, and recognizes the capacity all humans have for transformational faith. Is all of this a non-answer, a "use the brains God gave you" kind of dodge? Perhaps. And with further thought, I might find that there are things I think would be on Jesus' "list." But for now, I am inclined to think any lines of demarcation, any in/out, black/white, good/bad kind of lists, too easily serve our fears of otherness and overgeneralize to the point of exclusion, rather than promoting the radical, freeing inclusion Jesus models and wants for us.