My friend Shawn and I used to drive around in the forest.
He was a "car" guy and was all into street racing and loved taking care of HIS car, not mine, but HIS. Granted, I owned a 1981 Ford Fiesta that, on its last legs, topped out at about 35 mph, but still.
So Shawn would come over to my house and park his (insert cool car adjective here) Jetta in the garage and we would get in my junky, nearly broken slice of car hell and take it on the paths in the forests of southwest Germany and drive around.
It was pretty entertaining and we'd often see some interesting things on the way, but none as interesting as the time Shawn, our friend Kevin and myself took a left where we normally went right and wound up somewhere we really didn't belong.
Before I tell you what we ran into, I should remind you we were in Germany; we were teenagers; Shawn is African American; Kevin and I are not; and we were all stupid.
So there we were one chilly late afternoon near Miesenbach Germany in a white 1981 Ford Fiesta driving around the paths of a beautiful forest, avoiding fallen branches, laughing and joking around, basically having a wonderful time as three free young men on the Earth exploring unknown territory when all of a sudden Shawn starts to slow the car down. Kevin and I start to pay attention and we realize we are on a very skinny, precarious road going down a hill at a rather steep angle. We'd already gone far enough to the point where it would be more dangerous to try and reverse out so we just kept going. As we started to feel a bit safer, we noticed a couple people walking down the hill in front of us. It was two men in dark coats just walking down the hill. As we slowly approached behind them in the car, they both simultaneously turned and looked directly at us.
We waved.
They did not.
They just stared.
Now to be fair, the staring was normal for us. For some reason I have yet to understand, European people have a much higher tolerance for staring. They will lock eyes with you and even after we Americans reach our time limit for comfortably locking eyes with another human we don't know, they will just keep on going.
So we weren't really taken aback by their staring, even when they both split to opposite sides of the road so we could pass and both of them kept staring directly at us as if piercing into our souls with their dark eyes, we didn't yet feel the gravity of the situation.
Then we turned the next corner and there it was in all it's red, white and black infamous glory. From a man made flag pole sticking up from the dirt flew the one flag that immediately evokes terror, anger and sadness all at once --the flag of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, in English the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or more commonly known around the globe as the Nazis.
It now became clearer why the two men behind us were staring and even more clear why they had completely shaved heads. Once we were able to unlock our eyes from the least welcoming symbol of all time, we noticed there were about 20 or so similarly attired and hair styled men standing around at the bottom of the hill. Kevin and I were nervous, but I can only imagine the deep, penetrating fear Shawn was experiencing in that moment. Either way, fear or not, Shawn kept driving. I don't know if many people know the feeling of 20 skinhead nazis staring you down, but it is a heavy feeling. Once we passed them and made it out of the forest without saying more than a couple words to each other, we drove straight to my house and just sat for a couple minutes trying to shake off the moment.
Who knows why we made it out of there without so much as a word or gesture from a group of hate mongers who are not known for leaving people alone, but we did. And even though I was afraid of those men and a little angry that they were still meeting under such a cause as that of the nazi party, there was another emotion that overwhelmed all of those. I knew I did not belong in that place. And it was that feeling that drove Shawn, Kevin and I out of that forest as fast as possible. We did not belong there. We knew what they believed, what they thought about us as Americans and about Shawn as an African American, and we knew we had extremely differing views on most likely everything going on in the world so it was very clear that this was not where we should be. Who knows why they were gathering, but we knew we weren't going to participate or get anything out of whatever their plans were. So we left.
Isn't that how we all react when we find ourselves mistakenly in a situation where we know for sure that we don't belong?
It's like when you pick up a glass of what you think is soda and it turns out to be milk. You spit it out.
It's like when you go to quickly hug your Aunt and she gives you a big, sloppy kiss on the mouth.
It's like when an unbeliever goes to a church and people around them start passionately singing and praying and confessing their sins and the preacher opens up the scriptures and passionately teaches his congregation how to aggressively and lovingly go about the business of reaching their neighbors, friends and coworkers with the truth of Christ.
...
Right?
...
That's okay, right? It's okay if their uncomfortable, right? Can I say that?
In fact I think it's true that if an unbeliever attends your church, but never feels like he/she doesn't belong or maybe thinks the people around them are a bit weird with all the singing, praying and confessing, then maybe you're in an ineffective church.
The Gospel is a penetrating force that cuts into the hearts of men and women. The truth of Jesus is not soft or easy to hear. It's powerful, incisive and mind-blowing. So when we take that powerful, incisive truth and soften it up, ease it back a bit so that everybody feels comfortable with it, we are robbing those unbelievers of real truth. We are making them feel comfortable rather than convicted, spiritually assaulted and broken down which is what the raw truth of the Gospel should do to those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior and King. We are dulling the sword of truth until it's about as powerful as the foam swords my daughter and I play with.
Let the Gospel be sharp and powerful. Let the Gospel be what it is. Don't be afraid to make people uncomfortable.
C.S. Lewis, one of the great modern fathers of our Faith said this:
"If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
In Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale "The Cask of Amontillado" the villain is able to kill his victim by getting him a little drunk and therefore making him comfortable and oblivious to the fact that he was walking him into a dark basement and brick by brick building a wall around him so he could not escape.
With every watered down, comfortable worship service we attend, we are becoming more and more drunk on the Cask of Comfort and slowly laying brick after brick which will eventually surround us and lock us into a deadly casual, lukewarm faith.
If that nazi flag hadn't been waving, or if those men had seemed the least bit inviting, we may have stopped the car. We may have gotten out and mingled.
And if we had done that, who knows how that story would have ended.
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