Looking for a Judgment-Free Zone

Over the weekend, I spent some time with pastoral colleagues at the Dallas Comedy House. The founder of DCH, Amanda Austin, taught a workshop on how to use the principles of comedy in preaching.

All of that was interesting, but what got my attention was her explanation about why she started the comedy club in the first place. She told us that she had simply fallen in love withcomedy, wanted others to fall in love with it, too, and then wanted to help others get up on stage to do it.

What I found fascinating was that Amanda realizes that she doesn’t simply run a comedy club; she understands that her main business is NOT primarily about bringing in audiences on Friday and Saturday nights, and getting them to buy lots of drinks.

No, her business model is very different. Instead, she has created a community of people who are learning how to do comedy in a variety of ways — improv, stand-up, sketch, podcasting, etc. She explained that she has worked hard to make DCH a judgment-free zone so that people will feel free to express themselves and open up to the creative spirit.

One of my colleagues suddenly perked up and said, “You’ve created a church, basically! At least what a church ought to be like!”

Amanda said, “I’ve never thought about it like that, but … yeah, I guess you’re right!”

Ever since, I’ve been musing on the similarities between running a church and a comedy club. What if I viewed my central job to be, not running worship services on Sunday morning, but helping people fall in love with Jesus? That’s why I became a pastor in the first place — I love this guy named Jesus. As much as possible, I want to be like him, because he knew how to love and do justice in the midst of a frighteningly evil world. He is everything the Scriptures say he is — bread, life, water, resurrection!

I want you to love him, too. And I want you to also live like him. Maybe I should spend more time helping you all do that, rather than trying to get butts in seats and checks in plates on Sunday morning. Maybe I can find ways to spend more time teaching and praying with you, rather than leading committees and doing paperwork.

All I want is for all of you to catch the spirit of Jesus, to get excited about who he is, to get Christ inside of you (see last week’s column), and to live the kingdom life. When those things start to happen in you and me, then the church becomes a very different kind of place. The church becomes a liberating, life-giving, happy kind of place.

And it becomes a judgment-free zone, just like the Dallas Comedy House.

That’s my biggest hope for the church. Most churches struggle with this judgment thing. It’s so easy to slip into a self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude in church settings. We all do it, because human nature is prone to putting others down in an effort to feel better about oneself.

But the number one lesson we learn from Jesus is that we should be very, very careful about casting judgments. Need I remind you what he said about this very subject? “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-4)

Next time you catch yourself ready to criticize, complain, or make fun of one of your fellow church members, decide to go judgment-free. Let it drop. Let it slide. Give him the benefit of the doubt; realize that whatever it is that has got you all worked up probably doesn’t matter in the long run.

And get back to following that guy named Jesus. That’s where the action is!

Back to Hope

People keep saying that we are in uncharted waters, that we live in a political era that is unprecedented, that these are dangerous times.

I don’t know about all that; if we knew our history a little better, we might realize that there have been contentious elections before, even some tinged with the threat of violence. America has faced a civil war, world wars, a great depression, not to mention racist and xenophobic tendencies. Presidents have been assassinated, and riots have rocked our cities in the past.

Every generation gets sucked into the lie that their generation is the harbinger of the Apocalypse, that the end of the world is right around the corner, or that the next election determines the future of everything that exists and has ever been and ever will be.

I’m skeptical of all the doom-saying, the dire predictions, the gloom. However, I also can’t help but notice that things are “darker.” There is a mean streak that runs through our country. Something is out-of-kilter.

And then there’s us — the Church. People who love Jesus and claim his name. People who call themselves “Christian.”

Something seems a little out-of-kilter with us, too. We seem to reflect the same mean streak; we appear to have the same fault lines running through us. We are just as torn, ragged, depressed.

This is not a good sign, brothers and sisters. Because at the core of our faith and religious claims, there exists a divine thing called “hope.” To be a Christian means to have a hope deep down inside us which sustains and drives us. We don’t succumb to despair that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, because we know it isn’t. We know — I mean, we truly know with all our mind and strength — that the world belongs to God, and that God is working to bring shalom to this earth.

I’m reminded of Paul’s pointed question to the Corinthians as he observed their loss of hope and faith: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Cor. 13:5)

Jesus Christ IN you? That sounds kind of weird, a little mystical and supernatural. Did Paul mean to say that?

Yes, I think so. It’s not the first time he makes this reference. In Galatians 2:20, Paul claims, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” In Ephesians 3:17, Paul says that he is praying “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” And in Colossians 1:27, Paul speaks of a mystery which he has been commissioned to proclaim; he describes the mystery itself as “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

This means the point of being a Christian is NOT that we must try harder at being like Jesus, or that we have to adhere to a rigid code of ethics and behavior; rather, the Christian life is one of being filled by Christ’s own presence. We have Jesus within us, closer to us than our breath, closer than our thoughts and prayers. We have God’s own power within, coursing through our veins.

And so in these difficult times, when lies and deception run rampant through all parts of our culture, and there is a thinly-veiled suspicion of violent anger, the people who are called by Jesus’ name will also act and look like Jesus.

So let me echo Paul’s question to all of you:

Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?

Dylan's 7 Greatest Gospel Songs

I’m not a child of the 60s; my formative years were the early 80s. But in 1978 a certain well-known rock icon became a born-again Christian and started writing gospel songs. For a period of five years, Bob Dylan was an all-out, full-bore Jesus freak.

I was introduced to Dylan’s music by the three albums of gospel music that he released during that period (Slow Train Coming, Saved, Property of Jesus), then quickly began devouring his back catalog, and became an enthusiastic follower of all the music he’s made since. I don’t think much of his gospel music ranks up there with his best work, but it certainly made its mark on me.

In honor of today’s news that Dylan has received the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, I’d like to point you all to the seven best songs on those gospel albums, and encourage you to take a listen.

7. Slow Train Coming: Even before his conversion, Dylan often played the role of Old Testament prophet, but he’s at his best in this brooding, rambling bluesy song about approaching judgment. He addresses “foreign oil controlling American soil,” “people starving and thirsting,” and “false healers and women haters,” while warning that “there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up round the bend.”

6. The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar: Dylan borrows a New Testament metaphor of Christ as the groom, and the church as the bride, for this rollicking, scathing criticism of “the madness of becoming what one was never meant to be.” It’s typical Dylan — is the song about the church, or about this woman named Claudette, or about war in the Middle East? Who knows and who cares when it sounds this good?

5. Precious Angel: This is a love song, pure and simple, but the woman Dylan pines for is also a spiritual companion. Dylan warns that “the enemy is subtle, how be it we are so deceived when the truth’s in our hearts and we still don’t believe?” The song is rife with Scriptural references, some easy to decipher, others more obscure.

4. Property of Jesus: In this song, Dylan describes what it’s like to become a Christian in public, perhaps drawing from personal experience. He sings the chorus with a note of scorn: “He’s the property of Jesus, resent him to the bone; you got something better, you got a heart of stone.” Ironically, after this album was released, Dylan appeared to drop his born-again views and return to his Jewish faith.

3. I Believe in You: Most of Dylan’s gospel music is confident and righteous, but this tune is darker and filled with doubt. The song depicts the believer who begins to feel alone and abandoned; it’s similar to one of the Psalms of lament. “I believe in you even through the tears and the laughter, I believe in you even though we be apart, I believe in you even on the morning after.”

2. Gotta Serve Somebody: This is the first song on the first gospel album, and it sent shockwaves through the music world when it was released in 1978. The song is vintage American blues with a simple message: “You’re gonna have to serve somebody; it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

1. Every Grain of Sand: This is the pearl of great price in Dylan’s Christian “phase.” The lyrics alone stand as a powerful testament to faith in the face of suffering and evil.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Congratulations, Bob! Thanks for the beauty.