Have you ever seen a person come back to life?
I don’t mean literally. The Easter miracle of nearly 2,000 years ago is not so easily replicated. We don’t have the power to physically raise the dead. Instead, we Christians have faith that death is nothing more than a temporary separation from the people we love. The pain we feel at a funeral is a pain of absence, not the pain of permanent loss.
No, I’m talking about something else — the resurrection and redemption when we see a person who is lost to darkness return to the light. It’s the dazzling smile when a young woman gets her one-year coin at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, or it’s in the tears of joy when an estranged husband and wife finally embrace again after repentance and forgiveness.
Or it’s in a moment like I experienced in a small church in Kentucky. One Sunday evening, our pastor was preaching about the prodigal son, Jesus’ parable about a young, ungrateful man who left his home, squandered his fortune and returned home completely broken, expecting to face anger and retribution — only to be greeted by a father who ran to him, embraced him and declared, “My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”
The pastor concluded his sermon with an altar call. “Some of you here are dead — you’re lost in a life you don’t want — but you can live again.”
It was a simple call, one that pastors have made countless times in countless churches. Often they’re ignored. The congregation sings its final song and files out. But this time someone answered.
From the back of the church, a young man choked out a single word: “Pastor?”
It sounded like a question, as if he was asking for permission to come forward. When we looked back to see who’d spoken, I heard a gasp. The young man was a deacon’s son who had abandoned his faith long ago. He’d become angry and violent. He bullied kids in the church’s youth group. It was shocking that he’d even shown up at church.
But he said it again, choking out that same word between his sobs. “Pastor?”
And then he came forward, but not in the usual way. Usually a person steps out into the aisle and walks forward. But not this person. He was so desperate to go forward that he stepped over the backs of the pews. And when he got to the altar, it wasn’t just the pastor who greeted him but many of the kids he’d bullied. They had left their pews when he did, and they were waiting for him at the front of the church.
They all embraced him. At that moment, I watched a person come back to life. It was its own kind of miracle.
When I talk to Christians who are struggling with their faith, one of the first things I ask them is, “Were you raised in a fear-the-world church or a love-your-neighbor church?”
Most people instantly know what I’m talking about. The culture of the church of fear is unmistakable. You’re taught to view the secular world as fundamentally a threat. Secular friends are dangerous. Secular education is perilous. Secular ideas are bankrupt. And you’re always taught to prepare for the coming persecution, when “they” are going to try to destroy the church.
The love-your-neighbor church is fundamentally different. It’s so different that it can sometimes feel like a different faith entirely. The distinction begins with the initial posture toward the world — not as a threat to be engaged, but as a community that we should love and serve.
To better understand the distinction, it’s worth remembering the Christian reaction to the “He Gets Us” ads that you might remember from past Super Bowls. I know there are secular readers who saw the ads as annoying, or perhaps part of a stealth Christian nationalist agenda.
But did you know that there were Christians who hated them even more? The images of Christians loving and serving people on opposite sides politically was deeply triggering to the most pugilistic Christian voices online.
Last year, for example, they were particularly offended by ads that showed a police officer washing the feet of a young Black man, an older woman washing the feet of a young woman outside an abortion clinic and a priest washing the feet of a gay man.
The ad ended with provocative words — aimed at Christians as much as anyone else: “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”
You see the contrast in the first days of the Trump administration. When President Trump dismantled foreign aid, he defunded a host of Christian ministries that had been welcoming refugees in the United States and doing lifesaving work abroad. We’ve seen Trump’s Christian allies directly attack the religious liberty of religious institutions that serve and care for migrants.
To be raised in a fear-the-world church is to experience a Christianity that declares with its words that the Resurrection is real, but seems incredulous about the possibility of a resurrection within its heart. If Christians truly can declare: “Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?” then why is there such pervasive fear?
Another way to describe a love-your-neighbor church is to say that it embraces a resurrection faith. Its aim is to follow Christ’s consistent pattern of moving to the suffering, the alienated and the sick, all to bring life from death.
We cannot, of course, exercise Christ’s literal power over death. We cannot declare, as Christ did to Lazarus, “Come forth,” and watch our loved ones walk out of the tomb. But we can try to heal, to care for the physical needs of suffering people, and we can be instruments of grace to those dying from different kinds of deaths — spiritual, emotional and social.
We live in a time of great anger. We live in a time of great pain. And everywhere we look we seem to see people of faith stoking anger and inflicting pain.
But a resurrection church that follows a resurrected savior should be a balm, not a blowtorch. It will never be perfect, of course, but its fundamental orientation isn’t toward protecting itself, but toward serving others. Its default posture toward difference isn’t suspicion, but affection.
It’s easy to look at a politicized faith and despair. My church — the American evangelical church — is the pillar of Trump’s political strength. As countless Christians cheer, he’s wielding the weapons of government to hurt many of the most vulnerable people in the world.
But there is another faith — one far removed from the headlines — that is doing something else entirely. Quietly and patiently, person by person, it does exactly what those young people in my church did for the young man who came forward, sobbing in sorrow for his anger and violence.
This faith loves its enemies. It mends the broken heart. And it declares, by word and deed, that no one is too lost to experience the love of God.
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David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).
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