If feels like HNAC Alison needs another advent post today. She’s a sassy gal and I don’t mind hearing what she has to say.

I was reflecting a few days ago on how in the lead up to Christmas we can unintentionally put road blocks in people’s way as they attempt to connect with Jesus. I think HNAC Alison would find church quite polarising.

And to an extent it always will be. Whilst Jesus is the Prince of Peace, he has come to divide. He said it himself:

But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven. Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’…

There’s no sitting on the fence with Jesus. You are either for him or against him, no matter what it might look like on the surface.

It reminds me of a video post I saw on LinkedIn recently. At the time I saw it there were only two comments.

The first: This man is awesome

The second: What a load of nonsense

That’s basically the two options you’ve got when it comes to taking a position on Jesus.

HNAC Alison would be siding with the second one and she’d say it’s because people in the church are ‘Exclusive Liars’.

HNAC would have done her research. She’d have read a bit of both the Old and New Testament. She’d come armed with lines from the Bible to argue her point if she ever darkened your church’s doorway.

She’d know the apostle, Peter’s sermon at Pentecost and the opening pages of Acts:

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

She’d know that was meaning Jesus. And she’d know what else Peter said about Jesus not long after:

Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.

Exclusivity she’d say. How can you just throw away all the other major world religions and claim them as useless? How exclusive and offensive!

She’d want them to exist in harmony but may not realise that this is intellectually problematic. Or she may, but just not want to think about too much.

This post isn’t going to think about it too much either, just reflect on the fact that I need to have an answer for that objection. Christmas time or otherwise.

Insert summer intensive here 🙂

So much for HNAC Alison’s objection on the exclusivity front in the New Testament. What about the ‘liars’ comment and the Old Testament?

She’d say it’s just as bad, if not worse.

You’d have to be living with your head under a rock to not know that the church has had its share of scandals. Some happening in recent years and others from yesteryear that have been hidden under lies.

HNAC Alison would want nothing to do with an organisation that parades itself as spiritually superior, yet on the underneath is full of manipulative liars seeking their own personal gain and pleasure, at times driven by jealousy and petty desires.

She’d say it was outrageous. She’d also say it’s to be expected.

“Just look at God’s people right from the start. Liars and tricksters. God’s people have always been this way.”

And she’s got a point. Consider Jacob, the founding father of Israel, literally.

Jacob had a twin brother, Esau. Twice, Jacob tricked Esau. The first time he tricked him out of his birthright. The second time he tricked him out of his blessing.

Jacob was a liar who tricked for the sake of his own personal gain.

Something that was originally in Esau’s possession was tricked out of his possession and into Jacob’s hands. Esau didn’t realise what he was doing at the time. It was only much later that he did and at this point declared that Jacob was rightly named.

My Bible footnote explains that Jacob means ‘he grasps the heel’, a Hebrew idiom for ‘he takes advantage of’ or ‘he deceives’.

Takes advantage of others.

It’s sadly true that there are those in the church who behave in this way. But just like Jacob, God will have his way with them, if not straight away, eventually.

As I often say to students, “Just worry about yourself.”

So I am, and I’m reflecting on what I might say to HNAC Alison or someone like her, if I meet them at church this Christmas or anywhere else at any time.

If it is true that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, then we need to make it clear to those with these roadblocks, just why it’s actually worth their while.

Yours with something old and something new,

Alison