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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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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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