I recently read the Gospel of John with a good friend and found a new favorite passage. In John 8:48-49 we see Jesus being confronted by his countrymen:

“The Jews answered him, ‘Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have demon? The Jewish people were concerned that Jesus was as heretic and a witch. The accusation of being a witch is easy to understand. Jesus constantly performed miracles, and he postured himself outside of the corrupt religious establishment. And so one had to wonder, Jesus wasn’t aligning with God’s ordained priesthood, so just maybe he was getting his power from a dark place.

But the charge of heresy is a bit more veiled to western eyes.  Samaria had fallen from grace during the time of exile. Babylonian armies took the best and brightest into exile. Those left behind created a kind of Creole culture by adopting the beliefs, customs, and values of Israel’s enemy, Assyria. This shift in culture led to the rise of the Samaritan sect. They still worshiped God. But they built their own temple. Their doctrine mutated. Some scholars speculate that their bad theology contained some elements that would eventually be known as gnosticism.

The accusation could be summed up like this: “You, sir, are a heretic and a witch.”

To which Jesus replied, “I’m not a witch.”

Jesus let the accusation of being a heretic stand. He didn’t spend a single sentence to make sure that everyone knew that his beliefs squared with scripture. Even more impressive was the fact that John didn’t come back after the fact and cover for Jesus’ glaring omission. John didn’t toss in a few sentences editorializing how that Jesus, being God, had his theology down pat.  Jesus offered no self-defense. John offered no blocking on Jesus’ behalf.

The accusation stood unchallenged and I guess it’s remained unchallenged for over two thousand years.

I don’t think it’s because Jesus doesn’t care about theology. I think it’s because he cares more about relationships than he does being understood. Jesus was willing to allow his reputation to be damaged for the sake of connecting with the Samarians. They mattered to him, to the point that he was willing to live with some bad press.

Donald Miller recently blogged about how being jerk is a type of heresy. What do you think: Isn’t defending your orthodoxy at the expense of relationship a form of heresy? If Jesus would have thrown the Samaritans to keep up appearances with his peers, how credible would he have been when he commanded his disciples to take the Gospel from Jerusalem and into Samaria?

Another question: Shouldn’t it be normal for people who follow Jesus to be intentional about forming relationships with people who have warped ideas of God?

I’m working through Eric Metaxas’ biography and I’m struck by the contract between the attitudes of Luther and Bonhoeffer regarding people with whom they had intellectual and theological disagreements.

During Luther’s later days, he developed an unconscionable anti-semetic streak. His earlier writings were hopeful that part of the fruit of the religious shifts that were taking place would be the mass conversions of the Jewish people. This did not come to pass and an older and, well, hateful Luther entertained persecuting the Jews and confiscating their property (Metaxas notes that Luther’s venom extended to other groups as well, most notably against the Catholics).  The Nazis found these writings of Luther and used them in their campaign to persuade the Germans that Judaism as the antithesis of Christianity. Luther’s larger than life personality was impressed upon the German nation: his Bible changed the nation, his theology changed their religion, and his hate helped give permission for unspeakable sins. It seems that love that only extends warmth with the goal of changing the Other is a subtle form of hate.

Within weeks of Hitler’s election to Chancellor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered a sermon outlining the how the church and state should relate. Bonhoeffer offered three suggestion for how the church should aid the state. First, the church should play a prophetic role to help the state be the institution that God intended. Secondly, Bonhoeffer argued that the church should “aid the victims of state action.” He declared “the church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. ” Bonhoeffer even want as far to say that the church might need to “put a spoke in the week of government” to end the injustices.

Bonhoeffer’s participation in the attempt to assasinate Hitler demonstrates the depth of his convictions. He loved the Jewish people without a thought to whether they would convert to Christianity. He saw them as people made in God’s image and therefore worthy of unconditional love and sacrifice, even if it cost him his life. Bonhoeffer didn’t commodify love and use it as a tool to leverage people to get in line with his thinking, no matter how true and right it was.

I can’t help but think that Bonhoeffer’s live is a better template for figuring out how the American churches should relate to the state than what we are doing right now.

Here’s some questions for discussion:

What groups of people does the church withhold love from because we haven’t figured out to change them?

Who are the victims of state action that the church should be defending, regardless of their beliefs?

Who are the people who are different from you that you are choosing not to love?

Who would become harder for you to love if you knew that you would never persuade that person to change their behavior or thinking?

It should be no wonder that the God who prioritized love as the top two commandments built the human brain to work better relating to other brains.

I was preparing for a conference this weekend and reviewed a University of Indiana study which states that learners retain 20% of what they hear and see, but 90% of what they teach others. I was struck at how serious God is about love. We were literally built for this. Our brains were created to function at their optimum potential when they are in relationship with other brains.

Physicists tell us that the universe has an anthropomorphic principle behind it. Several factors in our universe (gravity, atmosphere, etc.) had to all line up for human life to be possible. The fact that all of these unrelated factors were perfect for human life suggests that the universe was intentionally designed to host us.

And I wonder, the more that we learn about the human body– will we come to a similar realization, that we were built to give and receive love.

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(Four days till services in the new campus. Pixs, etc., later. Long impossible days– but this is what an answer to a great pray feels like: Great work.)