saved!

I just finished watching Saved! Maybe many Christians think it is a horrible mockery of Christianity and Jesus, but I think the film is so sadly true. In actuality, it is a statement about the mockery that those many "Christians" have made of Jesus.

The too common Christianity that the world sees is a commercialized hype. Isn't it bad that I can hardly stand the word "Christianity"? The connotation now is that it is some cult, and in many ways, this "faith" that people have created is just as much of a cult as anything else. The fake faith that people have created distracts from the truth. Somehow, maybe as a way of to try to attract "sinners," "Christians" have made their particular Jesus into nothing more than a fashion statement and the latest craze. And somehow, "Christians" have concluded that they are perfect and everyone who is not is different, an outcast. This is not the truth.

First of all, I don't need--I shouldn't need--a t-shirt or a bumpersticker to confirm my faith to myself or anyone else, especially God. And it hurts me to think we've reduced the lover of our souls to a pep rally song: I love Jesus! Yes, I do! I love Jesus! How 'bout you? Yes, that's just as fake as school spirit. And I don't believe I can dictate where He is or who He loves.

Yes, I believe that God sees all that we do. But He has His own infinite wisdom about all that. I am no one to judge. I am to love and not condemn. I, too, am just condemnable. We are all imperfect. Salvation is not something you prescribe to an "errant" person to make them an angel. It's not the be all and end all of some magical holiness to be recorded on some "I love Jesus" business card.

It is the very recognition that we are all a bunch of screw-ups, even ourselves. And not one of us can do anything about that. It doesn't matter how many times we wear a WWJD bracelet or punish ourselves for doing something wrong: We are not righteous. No, not even one.

The misconception is that once we've come to know the Truth, we're perfect. Many so-called Christians believe that. That is the source of all the judgmentalism on their part. And it's the mother of perceived hypocrisy.

Truth is a beautiful complexity. It is beyond my limited understanding, and we fail when we try to bring down to our level and try to fit it into a pop culture-sized box. Do I see everything in black and white? No. Most days, all I can see is grey. But that does not mean that black and white does not exist. Just because I am not perfect doesn't mean that perfection doesn't exist. There is my faith.