Follow Behind the Lion

I’m going to share one of my more intimate moments with the Father today. I hope it can encourage and help.

You’ll know by now that I’ve developed a strong antipathy for many swaths of southern evangelical Christianity. That’s not to say that I hate all southern evangelicals or the churches they belong to. What I truly hate are some the attitudes and beliefs which may show up in any religion, but are most prominently displayed today in America’s traditional evangelical movements. I’ll name a few of these “spiritually criminal” attributes which show up in the worst moments of church life:

*hyper-religious language used to avoid authenticity or accountability

*dogmatic legalism used to dehumanize some and boost the egos of others

*self-righteousness which rejects grace and reintroduces the worst kinds of shame into the religious culture

*Plain old hypocrisy

*Denominational empire-building competing for religious market shares

*top-heavy power structures which demand extreme deference and obedience to religious leaders

*Authoritarian theologies used to justify abuse

*Fear-mongering used to galvanize people in a cause

*The over-zealous pursuit of political power in the name of “standing for righteousness”

*Brashness and insensitivity in God’s name

*Used-car-salesman, love-ya-with-an-agenda evangelism tactics

*Spiritually manipulative fund-raising

I could go on. To be fair, most of my conservative evangelical friends will agree that these are awful things. But once in a while, I see my religion getting subtly hijacked by conservatives and it makes me furious. Furious enough to speak out. I’ve understood those bone-burning convictions as some kind of prophetic calling, to address evil in the church. But in speaking out, I’ve found myself getting shot down; not by my opponents but by a low-level depression that’s settled on me as I’ve lived and worked around this “spirit of religiosity” since moving to Georgia. I’ve been especially depressed (with that extra weightiness I’ve come to associate with spiritual warfare) for two months now. Today, I believe I’m emerging.

I think what it comes down to is this… I felt like God gave me a job and said, “go on. I’m sending you out. Fight hard. It will make you tough.” But today, as a friend put his hand on me and prayed for me over lunch, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Because when I closed my eyes I saw something. Behind my eyelids, I saw the fierce and stoic face of a lion just inches from me staring deeply back into me. I understood him to be fierce, furious, and fair… But also peaceful, and strong, and immutably good. Those dark glinting eyes saw me—REALLY saw me—but they also saw everything wrong and rotten in this world, and I just knew this creature would deal with evil wherever evil was found. And God seemed to say, “follow behind the lion.”

I understood something then that should have been obvious… God doesn’t give us jobs and then retreat to a safe distance to evaluate our performance. In fact, his promise is to do the heavy lifting even on the simplest tasks. Which doesn’t mean that our tasks should feel simple. But it does mean that we should walk through every realm of personal obligation and growth and calling with a deep immutable belief that God is with us and is going before us so that we’ll never have to feel orphaned or alone… even in the fiercest battles.

A second image flashed across my mind: a butterfly, wings outstretched, covered in eyes. I understood then that God is extremely seeing, not blind as I feared. God sees the evil and hypocrisy in the church, right down to the barest beliefs that drive the behaviors. And his absolute immovable commitment is to confront it with fairness and ferocity and pure goodness. I can’t hope to do any better than that.

So today, I’m following the lion. Taking cues from him, I will speak out against the Pharisaic cancer in the church, but only as he leads. This is the only way I can imagine that a prophetic commission can be exercised in an emotionally healthy way.