(this entry is a little different than my recent ones, because it's not about my cancer at all, but rather about some thoughts I meditated on while in the hospital)

     My main complaint about the week I spent in the hospital before and after my surgery was the pillows. Given how much a night in those rooms costs, I would expect that the pillows would be a little more comfortable. But I wasn’t there to be made comfortable. I was there to go under the knife.

     And as I reflect on that, I remember a comment I came across a few years ago. A friend of a friend was criticizing churches. Her complaint was that too many churches are not places where everyone is accepted just as they are. Now, I don't know this woman well at all and I don't know where she is in her relationship to Christ, but I do know she has been hurt by churches and that she has a heart for people who are different. I can sympathize with her and commend her for that. But her comment carries an assumption that has crept into popular thought about the church, something that I thought about during my recent hospital stay. There is a distinction to be made between welcoming people as they are and accepting people as they are. The church should always do the former. It should never do the latter.  The hospital welcomed me with a tumor, but they did not accept that I should remain unchanged.  The call to welcome sinners is not the same as a call to accept sin.

    Making people feel accepted and affirmed is not the end goal of Christian community. No more than making sure you are comfortable is the primary goal of the hospital staff when they admit you for surgery. Sure, they want you to feel safe and comfortable in their care, but their objective is much bigger than that. There is work to do on your body, work that will probably involve pain and discomfort, but which will ultimately lead to a greater comfort than you are capable of experiencing now. When a church becomes a place where welcome and acceptance are the highest virtues and greatest priorities, it becomes like a hospital with the fluffiest pillows but no knives. There is no healing in such a place as that.

     One of my pastors from many years ago used to say that his job was to “comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable” (I didn't know it at the time, but he was quoting 19th century journalist Finley Peter Dunne). It's not just the openly rebellious, the thieves and murderers and adulterers who are called to repent of their sins and to turn from their current path and follow Jesus. It is all of us. The church does a grave disservice to her hearers when she neglects to call them to repentance and seeks instead to reinforce the delusion that we are just fine the way that we are. To love sinners, to truly love them the way Jesus would, our work cannot end at welcoming them, embracing them, listening to them, and seeing in them image-bearers of their creator and ours. No, that is only the beginning. It's only the beginning for all of us.

     I need to stand before God's Word like a man looking in the mirror, allowing it to reveal my deficiencies and sins (James 1:21-25). I need to call my religious, moral, kind-hearted brothers and sisters to do the same. As a preacher on Sunday morning, I do not seek to reinforce the complacency of people who think they are fine just the way they are. I call everyone to examine themselves in the light of God's design and expectations and to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to change us into conformity with the image of God in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29). We expect nothing less of everyone who passes through our doors. To deny this is to be a hospital that refuses to perform surgery, lest it hurt someone.  After all, the church preaches the Word of God, which Hebrews 4:12 describes as, "sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

     The accusation then comes that this is inconsistent with grace. Grace demands nothing of us, we are told. I submit that this is half right. Unconditional welcome and acceptance is half the story of grace. The grace of God receives us as we are – the father in Luke 15:11-24 embraced the runaway son, even though his son was covered in filth upon his return. But he didn't leave him in filth. He called for him to be re-clothed in fitting garments. The woman caught in adultery is not condemned by Christ, but she is called to leave her sin behind (John 8:1-11). Scripture tells us that the grace of God “teaches us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12).

     Yes, too often the people of God have confused the spiritual surgery of gracious correction with something ungracious and unhelpful. Too often we have stood at the door to the hospital, refusing to allow the sick and hurting to enter. This, too, is wrong. But to joyfully bring in the wounded and diseased and then to deny them the healing they need simply to be polite is also wrong.

     To call on sinful people (and by that, I mean all of us) to turn from what is sinful according to God's Word is not inconsistent with loving them and welcoming them. And to insist that we must choose either one approach or the other (i.e., to say we must either be gracious and welcoming or else speak of sin and call people to repentance) is a false dichotomy. Most of us lean too much in one direction or the other. Some have fully abandoned one in pursuit of the other. We are all called to both. Jesus did both. The church should be characterized by both. Only both of these things together will provide the healing needed by sin-sick souls.