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Until We All Have Faces Again

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By Jason Comerford

Hey, fellow Elimites. How’s your fellowship with one another going? If you’re like me, it’s been a struggle.

I’ve grown weary of mainly seeing other humans through my computer screen. Zoom meetings are a handy tool, but they’re a poor substitute for seeing one another in person. And let’s not even get started on Facebook. Chatting with my folks from a thousand miles away can’t replace a good hug.

I think at this point, no one would disagree much about the value of seeing each other in person. It’s incredibly important, and we’re hurting from not having it. But as we move our church services from the parking lot back into the building and tackle the practical challenges of being indoors again, I worry about some of the habits we’ve developed in our extended isolation. I’d like to talk about some of the spiritual challenges in, once again, seeing each face to face.

Seeing Humanity

The first challenge is, I think, the more obvious of the two. We’ve lost sight of our brothers and sisters’ God-imaging humanity. That might sound a bit extreme, but I think that’s what interacting largely through social media and computer screens has been training us to do. As C. S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory:

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

We’ve forgotten what it means to work with, play with, and live with beings made in the wonderful image of our creator God. These are the people we argue with, hurt, and dismiss so brazenly online. When we’re in community and facing one another regularly, it’s much harder to dehumanize the human who’s right in front of you. As we step back into community, we’re going to have to embrace the challenge of seeing and treating one another as image bearers of God and not merely as whatever category social media has trained us to see each other as.

Vulnerability

The second challenge is slightly more insidious—and for me, at least, probably the harder of the two. We’re going to have to let others see us again.

Now, that might sound very obvious and, honestly, pretty easy. Just show up, right? But the natural effect of us dehumanizing and judging one another is that we’ve learned to hide ourselves away to avoid that very same dehumanization and judgment. As we treat others, so we expect to be treated. Other people can’t hurt you if you don’t show up, don’t enter into relationship, and don’t embrace the vulnerability required to live in community. There’s risk in being known, and certainly some hurt. But I think, in this season, one clear act of taking up our cross and following after Christ is going to be in our earnest pursuit of relationship. No hiding ourselves away. We’re going to have to look at one another face to face.

Even as the world has tried to train us to view one another through a combative lens, we must  adhere to the teachings of Jesus when he says:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? (Matthew 5:44-46)

Fellow Elimites, we are not enemies. However, we do ourselves a disservice if we don’t recognize our drift towards viewing one another that way. It is easy to congregate and gather with those we agree with, but there’s nothing Christ-like about that. True Christlike love will gravitate towards and humbly, kindly serve those who would, according to the world, be our enemies. Even within the family of God, we must find a way to apply this teaching. It might even be harder here, but do it we must.

Think and pray about this. Even if you’re not ready to come to an in-person service, consider how you can creatively (and safely) enter back into relationship with your fellow Christians. Our courage in this season isn’t mainly about how we respond to the virus—it’s about how we respond to each other. Will we give grace and wait on it from our brothers and sisters? Or will we come ready to fight?

P.S.—Shout out to all you who are rightly appalled at the blatant theft of my title from C. S. Lewis’s brilliant book Till We Have Faces.

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A Call to the Church Body of Elim

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By Jason Comerford

Most of us don’t know what it’s like to live in constant fear.

To be sure, we have our moments and our challenges. Perhaps we are worried about our job and possible layoffs. How are we going to pay off that credit card? Or maybe we had a concerning physical exam with the doctor. These are legitimate trials.

But as we watch the protests unfolding in hundreds of cities across the world, it’s becoming clearer that our black brothers and sisters are experiencing our country in a way that white people generally aren’t.

This past year, I’ve been hearing many stories from black friends, both within the Church and without. Over and over, the same theme rises to the surface: helplessness in the face of abuse by authority.

It’s the humiliation of being asked, in your own neighborhood, if you belong there. The chill of anxiety that comes with a traffic stop, wondering if you’ll be just one more statistic. The dismay that comes from knowing that the first time you give your son “the talk,” the topic won’t be “the birds and the bees,” but instead, “how to respectfully respond to the police when they stop you on the street.” The sickening reality of recognizing which of your mixed-race children will “pass for white.”

These are not isolated stories. This is a daily reality for at least 40 million black men and women living in the United States. And recently the Elder Board has been wrestling with the recognition of this painful reality.

Recognizing Grief

Friends of Elim, one of the things we need to recognize is that central to these protests is the voice of grief. This is what it looks like when the struggle of multiple lifetimes of grief and oppression overflow with little hope for justice.

I’m saddened that our response in the American white Church has long been to critique the legitimacy of protesters and their methods, rather than to feel the incalculable grief and pain of our black brothers and sisters.

The Church in America has arrived at a moment of reckoning. Martin Luther King Jr., whom we love to uphold as a beloved civil rights leader, famously lamented that one of his biggest obstacles was not violent bigots such as the KKK, but silent white churches. I fear that this hasn’t changed much in the last 60 years.

Fortunately, even now, there’s still a way forward in all of this.

How Do We Respond?

We have a lot to discuss in the coming months and years. We need to take a hard look at systemic racism—the racism running deep within and shaping our society. It’s outside most of our daily experiences, and so it’s a blind spot for us. We’ll need to take a hard look at our own history at Elim and examine if we’ve played a role in it. If so, we’re going to have to call it sin and repent.

And then we must find a way to act.

The call to the Church is to be salt and light in our world, and we’ve taken up that call with issues such as human trafficking and abortion. We’ve not only preached against these things, but also taken up activist roles to put a stop to these evils. Along with preaching to the heart, wherein lies the ultimate root of these problems, we have sought to change laws, addressing systemic problems with systemic responses.

To fail to do likewise when it comes to the travesty of racism would be an obvious hypocrisy.  We cannot merely “preach the Gospel” at the problem and then fail to pursue actual justice. God has clearly told His people how he feels about religious pretense that fails to do any actual good.

So, here’s where this starts for us.

Education

The first step is education. This is not onlyseeking an understanding of the facts, important as that is, but also listening to the stories of our black brothers and sisters and willingly immersing ourselves in their perspective, entering into their pain. Before we can even begin to discuss heavy and important topics such as systemic racism and the proper response of the Church, we must learn how to listen and weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

Let me be clear: this is no small thing we’re being called to. The human heart wants to discount those who are different from us, to explain away their experiences in order to preserve our comfortable and unchallenged view of the world—especially when it involves the history of our own compromise and guilt in the American Church. To attempt to educate ourselves will be an act of spiritual warfare. We will be opposed.

Nevertheless, we must do this.

If we wish to serve our Lord Jesus Christ and be a light to the world around us, then we cannot ignore this calling; if we do, we’ll continue to watch as Christianity in this country slides into something utterly irrelevant to our society.

What’s Next for Elim?

I call upon Elim and its leadership to seek out black voices, read black books, and hear black stories. I’d like to see us hold after-church conversations discussing what we’ve learned, bringing in speakers as we think this through. We can seek recommendations for materials that can help with all this—books, podcasts, and more. We could really make this a part of the life of our church.

Long term, we could see Elim become so reflective of the unity and diversity of Christ that we begin to see a greater diversity in our membership and qualified leadership. The people of God are helped, not hurt, by different perspectives and views within the Body.

Elim: Let’s pray and think seriously about this. Education and understanding are merely a first step toward the more important goal of action. Not everything has to happen right now, but we risk rejecting our calling entirely by pushing off the call of justice to a more “convenient” time. Finding our next pastor is very important, but we do not get to put off the more weighty matters of the law until then.

I believe God has laid this at our feet during such a trying time not to make things harder, but because it is the right time for us to embrace it. Our God is a God who works justice and mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation, love and resurrection. These things really are possible in our world.

What a testimony to His greatness would it be to see such wonderful things worked in our day and in our country?

“With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

                                                                                    Micah 6:6-8

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The End Times and the Heart of the Believer

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By Jason Comerford

What do you think of when you imagine the end of the world? Many of us draw on pop culture images of cities burning or zombies. We may even consider biblical mentions of things such as earthquakes and wars. I could give you an impressive list of all the postapocalyptic, zombie-driven movies, video games, and novels that inundated the world while I was in high school and college in the early 2000s. Our culture’s been obsessed with Armageddon for a while now.

What would you think if I told you that the Bible’s end-times warnings are not primarily about those big, earth-shattering events?

As I write this, we’re amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses have shut down, religious services are being restricted, hospitals are both overwhelmed and laying off medical staff, and the world as we know it has gone utterly, terribly sideways. Unemployment claims are at staggering levels not seen for nearly 100 years, and the foundations are still being built for a kind of financial hardship that will likely be felt for a long, long time.

As bleak as all that sounds, those still aren’t the primary things the Bible warns about when it comes to the end times. In fact, on the topic of turmoil and war, Jesus simply says don’t worry about it.

Here’s what we’re really warned about, courtesy of Matthew 24:

10And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

We can drill down into the specifics a bit more in in 2 Timothy 3:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

The real danger of the end times is not war and disease. It’s a cold-hearted, loveless humanity. COVID is not the real danger here—we are.

If you’ve spent any time at all online in the last month and a half, you’ve surely noticed the rift forming in our world as we see (essentially) two camps rise up on how to respond to the coronavirus.

And let’s be honest—this is a momentous issue. We can’t pretend that there aren’t very significant consequences to how we handle it. Whether you’re mainly concerned about government overreach, or economic devastation, or implementing steps to practically limit the infection rate, everyone can agree that the stakes are high. But as real and as important as these issues are in this moment, we Christians have a responsibility to recognize, call attention to, and preserve something that few others seem to be noticing: the state of our hearts.

I offer my own heart for dissection here. I make a great, guilty specimen.

Over the last six weeks, my main emotion has been anger, followed closely by grief. I’ve felt betrayed by some and found myself wondering how I’ll ever manage to return the familial affection of the church I was so comfortable in a mere three months ago. I’ve condemned—and hated—the responses and behaviors of many of my closest friends. In private messages with like-minded people, I’ve called those others fools and lamented their inability to see things the way I do. Anger almost feels like too soft a word to use—violent fury might be closer to the truth.

All the while, Matthew 24 echoed in my mind: “The love of many will grow cold.”

And like a pick, that single verse began to chip away at my anger. Anger turned to fear as a I realized what “faction” I found myself in. It wasn’t those who wanted effective quarantine or those who worried about government overreach. I was finding myself in the company of the “many” whose love was growing cold.

And I would wager most of us find ourselves there now.

So, what do we do?

I would exhort us to embrace and commit to doing three things. These are not new concepts to us as Christians, but I suspect our behavior here in America is exposing our need for a newer and deeper embrace of our old beliefs.

  • We must forgive what now feels unforgiveable.

Many of us feel betrayed by our brothers and sisters in Christ. They’ve hurt us with words and actions, and they may not even recognize it. But how much has Christ forgiven us? Can’t we also forgive others?

  • We must love those who now feel unlovable.

When our friends choose sides that seem unthinkable to us, can we still pray for their blessing? Can we seek ways to serve them? If God calls us to love our enemies, can’t we also love those with whom we share the faith, our family in Christ?

  • We must endure what now feels unendurable.

Regardless of how you view our current situation, it’s not easy. I doubt any of us are enjoying being physically separated from friends and family. For those in our community who are in high-risk categories, the isolation may look unending. But if Christ suffered isolation and betrayal from friends and family—and even His Father—can’t we endure this season? 

None of this is new to the Christian experience. Our history is filled with lavish forgiveness, impossible grace and the noisy joy of men and women who died singing God’s praises. This is because our ancestors knew the God who loved His enemies. Now it’s our turn to learn, once again, to do the same.

This is our only option as believers. If we don’t choose the hard way of love and forgiveness and endurance, we will grow bitter and hardhearted. Our love will grow cold. We will lose our witness to the world as well as the sweetness of community in Christ.

Friends, there is hard work ahead of us. But if we forgive freely, love unconditionally, and endure this season patiently, trusting that our God’s designs are good even now,then like the Galatians, “At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.”

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Snake Oil and the Serpent

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By Jason Comerford

I learned something fascinating the other day about snake oil.

Most of us have heard that phrase, right? Snake oil is kind of a catchall term in our culture for flimflam and false cures. It’s come to symbolize someone selling you something that doesn’t live up to what it promises.

Long before it received its reputation, snake oil was actually an old Chinese treatment for minor aches and pain. It was first brought to the West when Chinese laborers came over to work on the transcontinental railroad. It was a topical treatment rubbed on joints to help bring some relief. It was (allegedly) reasonably effective.

The reputation it’s since garnered comes from what happened after some crafty Western businessmen got a hold of the idea. I’ll spare you the details, but a slew of dubious products were made and sold as “snake oil.” They promised everything from curing headaches to solving kidney problems, something they clearly couldn’t deliver on. And they usually weren’t made with snake of any kind. So now, the idea of snake oil persists as a symbol for impossible promises fed to us by con artists.

Impossible promises from a con artist sounds like an apt description for a certain serpent we know.

Remember Satan’s early trick from Genesis? He offered humanity something that he claimed was even better than the real thing (fulfilling desires apart from God). He downplayed the goodness of God and suggested finding an alternative. He still convinces us that God’s gifts and commands aren’t good for us, and that maybe He’s withholding what we really need. He offers an alternative that, on the surface, sounds like it’s even better than the original thing that God offers—but it’s just snake oil. It’s a simple idea once you know to look for it.

The hard part of this is identifying snake oil in our own lives. We don’t always realize it, but we’re almost always being sold something, promised something. Maybe a new job can give you that sense of purpose you’re longing for, or maybe a new relationship will finally make you feel fulfilled. Or it could be something less obvious—just one more cookie to cover over your anxiety and need for comfort. Maybe it’s one more hour of Netflix despite work in the morning, as though just a little more entertainment will finally be the thing that satisfies you.

Satan doesn’t really care what it is, as long as you’re investing those hopes and needs in something other than God—God, who is literally the source of all pleasure, the God of all hope, and the God who supplies everything we need.

What about you? What has Satan tried to sell you on? What are you looking to for joy and hope that’s not trust and obedience to your Heavenly Father?

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Other People and the Glory of God

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By Jason Comerford

I first came to Elim nine years ago, in early 2011. I had been dating my wife (then girlfriend) for over two years and would be proposing to her later that year. The months following my first trip to Elim were a whirlwind of forming new relationships, meeting new people, attending a community group, and trying to figure out my place at my new church.

Looking back, I’ve noticed a pattern to the relationships I formed. Nearly every person that I now count a dear and respected friend was, early on, someone I couldn’t stand. They were always (from my perspective) some combination of annoying, disrespectful, weird, or some other gripe I conjured up.

This led to . . . well, not returning phone calls. Deleting messages. Ignoring people walking right toward me on Sunday mornings. Figuring out ways to cut conversations short and being terribly annoyed when Hannah suggested inviting certain people over to our home.

All this time, I actually thought I was obeying Romans 12:16: “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.” By spending time with certain people, I thought I was associating with the lowly. I thought I was being humble.

Fortunately for me, God is very patient in correcting petty, judgmental, self-absorbed jerks.

(I would like to use much stronger language in my self-assessment here, but this is a church blog. Use your imagination.)

The words of C. S. Lewis were helpful in correcting this attitude problem. His book The Weight of Glory (p. 15) says the following:

It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or another of those destinations. . . . It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

Stumbling on these words came as a gentle slap to the face. In a moment, I realized how blindingly arrogant and uncharitable I had been in my treatment of certain people. And I suddenly realized how odious my attitude had been—indeed, still is sometimes. It’s dishearteningly easy to value people on the sole basis of how much I enjoy talking to them.

The best people and greatest friends I’ve met came not from finding the one person I clicked with, but from meeting someone whom God revealed to me as a being created in His Holy image, full of God’s own dignity and value and wonder. Those boring and uncomfortable people I once eschewed for my preferred friends have since blessed me with more kindness, wisdom, and patience than I once thought possible.

I’m a better person, indeed a better Christian, because God was gracious enough to open my eyes to the wonder of other people.

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Jesus and the Idiot Optimist

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By Jason Comerford

                Y’know what most of my life experience has led me to believe?

                Things work out for Jason Comerford.

 I have this weird, ill-defined feeling about how things tend to generally go well for me. This is, I suspect, thanks to growing up in a middle-class household with good parents, being an only child who never had to share, and generally reaping the benefits that come from being born white and male in America. A lifetime filled with financial security and parental affection has built into me this very undeserved sense that the world bends itself toward taking care of me.

Idiot optimism, I’m calling it.

Aside from being obviously wrong, there’s a lot of ways this sentiment can go dangerously sideways. I can become arrogant, imagining that my hard work or my intelligence caused this. Or maybe I’m just inherently so special, so important, that the world around me DOES bend to my will to keep me safe. Delusion at its finest.

But the most dangerous aspect of it, I’ve discovered, is that idiot optimism doesn’t require any faith. Optimism looks like faith, but it lacks any kind of reason for assurance or hope. And it’s hard to tell the difference. It’s an insidious counterfeit, mimicking the peace and decision-making of ACTUAL hope in Jesus Christ.

Faith, on the other hand, is an entirely different animal. Faith is, very specifically, trust in a person.

Don’t skim over that. This is no vague, unproven sense that things will be okay. Faith has a reason for thinking things will turn out okay and be made right one day. That reason is Jesus.

Jesus, who gives His own kingdom to the poor. (Matthew 5:3)

Jesus, who promises to comfort the mourning. (Matthew 5:4)

Jesus, who heals sick people. (John 5:1–9)

Jesus, who forgives all of our sins. (Mark 2:1–12)

Jesus, who grieves over the lost. (Luke 13:34–35)

Jesus, who casts out demons. (Mark 5:1–20)

Jesus, who conquered death. (Revelation 1:18)

Faith hears and believes that everything really will be made right one day, that a happy future really does await all those who trust Jesus. That no matter the heartache, no matter the darkness, no matter the injustice, no matter the danger that faces us, Jesus will restore all things and wipe every tear from our eyes. He will make things right. It may not be in this lifetime, but it will happen.

 And not because of any silly notion that the world bends to my will.

But because it bends to His.

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