Embracing the Unembraceable

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
Albert Camus

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside another skin, for allowing the alien to become known.”
Leslie Marmon Silko

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Mark Twain

“The axe forgets what the tree remembers.”
African Proverb

In our last post, Down But Not Out: A Ragtag Resistance, we considered how David’s wilderness cave of Adullam became a rallying point for the distressed, indebted, and bitter of soul to find new purpose. The ragtag group who joined David previewed the upside-down economy of God’s Kingdom, where the overlooked and outcast are destined for mighty things. Yet, as we read the accounts of David’s mighty men who emerged from those caves, we can infer that many did not simply suffer from difficult circumstances but likely had some unsavory pasts and character flaws themselves. While the Scriptures do not provide many details about their former lives before joining David, we know we all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). What unlovely behaviors, lifestyles, or mindsets might these warriors have once embraced before the transforming leadership of David and their devotion to God’s coming Kingdom? The thought of the unsavory raises the question: are we, the church, prepared to go and embrace the unlovely among us with the same nurturing spirit David extended his outcasts? To delve beyond surface-level stigmas and discern the fragmented divine worth weighing down people’s souls?

An Unsavory Welcome
“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15, ESV). At first glance, David’s men seem the most undesirable of companions, abrasive, unkempt, and rough around the edges. Yet, these are precisely the sort of people Christ spent His time with, to the bewilderment of the pious. As His followers, are we ready to extend the same radical embrace? To open our lives and churches to the unlovely outcasts that others avoid? This embrace is the upside-down call of the Gospel that roots out pride and transforms stigma into seeking love. For many of us, extending welcome to the unlovely is one of the greatest tests of authentic Christianity. Let us be honest, it is far easier to surround ourselves with the sanitized and respectable, but Christ’s example beckons us to something more unsavory and more true.

Piercing Our Pretense
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13, ESV). The unlovely have a way of stripping us of all pretense. Their brash mannerisms and uncouth ways lay bare the ugliness of our own unbecoming thoughts. Shining light into the dark rooms of pride and self-righteousness we keep carefully concealed. In their presence, we can no longer take refuge in polite fiction about our maturity and Christlikeness. The unlovely hold up a mirror to all the subtle ways we still crave the admiration and favor of others. Through them, we come face-to-face with the question, are we really willing to be made low? To sacrifice our need to impress and position ourselves as the respectable ones? The unlovely demand a reckoning with our motives for serving Christ.

Wounded Healers
“I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath” (Lamentations 3:1, ESV). What makes the unlovely so difficult to embrace is the pain they emanate. Many people bear spiritual and emotional wounds that have hardened them with bitterness and calloused them to softness. Their tone is sharp, and their manner is off-putting because their affliction has molded them with a harsh carapace for survival. The gentlest approach can be rebuffed with porcupine quills of anger and cynicism. Our response is where the Way of Christ parts from the wisdom of the world—although our instinct is to retreat from such people, Jesus wades directly into their hurt with inexplicable compassion. He beckons us to walk the hard road of being wounded healers, absorbing the brunt of their scarring but continually extending unquenchable grace.

A Wardrobe for the Front Lines
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones...compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12, ESV). If we are to embrace the unlovely, it will require an entirely different wardrobe from the superficial garments we often wear in the Christian community. Compassion must be our outermost coat, durable enough to withstand scorching retorts and shameful language yet supple with the giving spirit of Christ. We tailor kindness for these rougher environs, not the saccharine sort that cannot stomach harsh realities, but a sturdy kindness fortified to see past calloused fronts to the fragile want beneath. A kindness not stunned by unkind responses, but made more resilient through them. Above all, clothing ourselves with empathy, the hard-earned ability to hear the ragged cries of a broken humanity. To discern the core anguish lying beneath layers of off-putting behaviors. This discernment is the soul-piercing gift that lets the unlovely know their deepest wounds are seen and understood.

Loving With Righteous Boundaries
“O you who love the Lord, hate evil!” (Psalm 97:10a, ESV). Yet, for all our call to embrace, there is still a line we must not cross. A righteous boundary where we hate the evil, not the evildoer. Where we oppose wickedness without scorning the human soul entrapped by it, this is no easy balance and requires the wisdom of Christ Himself. To love the unlovely while never condoning or minimizing their destructive words and deeds. To extend boundless grace while leaving no room for sin to proliferate and sever the behavior from the human soul with the precision of a scalpel. It is a high calling and one we cannot uphold in our own strength, but by God’s power, we can plant unshakeable stakes in the soil of sin while raising our arms in tireless welcome to those still caught in its webs.

A Visible Love
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35, ESV). Of all the barriers keeping the unlovely at a distance, perhaps the greatest is the self- perpetuating cycle of judgment. For too long, many have only known rejection from people of faith. A thousand closed doors convinced them that “Christians” could never love someone like them. For this reason, we make embracing the unlovely so paramount through our extravagant, unmerited welcome and dismantle the lies that have calcified around people’s souls. In this, we replace the lies with a winsome vision of God’s true heart through His people. When the unlovely encounter this self-giving, unflinching love in our midst, it begins to reshape their assumptions. The eyes of their heart become slowly unsealed to the reality of God’s redeeming love through the visible family of Christ is how their defensive barriers start to disintegrate.

A Long Obedience
“And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:24-25, ESV). Loving the unlovely is not a short race, it is a marathon of patient, grace-saturated endurance. Every combative soul represents years or decades of accumulated wounds and self-protective scarring. Like layers of scar tissue, their bitterness and off-putting ways are the body's natural response to deep, unhealed trauma. To expect an instantaneous breakthrough or warm reception is to underestimate the strength of those emotional fortresses. No, this is the labor of steadfast farmers. We must prepare our souls to continually plant seeds of love, tend them with unwavering compassion, and trust the Lord of the harvest to bring life- giving fruit in His time. This labor is the slow, overcoming work of making disciples. But through diligent, Christ-empowered constancy, even the most stalwart defenses will yield before the force of unrelenting love.

A Summons to the Bold
“When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (1 Corinthians 4:12-13, ESV). So, let us consider our calling. While so many churches diligently serve the agreed-upon poor, are we willing to pursue the even more unlovely? The offensive, the caustic, and the wounding individuals that most write off and sideline? To love them is the summons before us and to let our love and welcome be supernaturally indiscriminate. To be so secure in Christ’s love for us that we can scale the highest walls of anger, addiction, and affliction. To endure any revilement or defamation because we have put our hands to the unwavering plow of redemptive love. When their poison-tipped responses pierce us, to return revilement with blessing. To meet slander with patient entreaty. Demonstrating the same persistent grace that Christ is even now extending to us in our faltering attempts at this high call. If we are ready to follow our Lord in this crucible of cruciform love, we will both taste the cross and the resurrection. Only through entering their suffering can we lead the unlovely out on the far side of their captivity into the glorious freedom of God’s beloved.

Are You Unshockable?
So take stock of how far you are willing to extend and embrace those our culture has cast aside as unlovely. This willingness is the litmus test of whether our welcome is shaped by the Gospel or merely middle-class Western sensibilities. Can we bear the unkempt stench and abrasive language of people trapped in brokenness? Can our insecurities withstand the sting of their caustic language or are we too easily hurt and offended? Will we persist through their attempts to wound and offend until the brilliant radiance of Christ-centered love overwhelms their darkness? Or are we so easily scandalized that we turn our backs on the very souls Jesus received gladly? So addicted to respectability that we cannot descend into the squalor of those society shuns? The call is uncomfortably clear: are we prepared to be an unshockable community? A safe haven where any unlovely soul can fall apart at the entrance and through unflinching, self-giving love, be reassembled into the undaunted image of Christ? To lock arms with the sin-sick and spiritually malformed is the upside-down Kingdom way. To have our sentiments repeatedly piqued and our ideals of holiness confronted. All so that through our rugged, cross-shaped compassion, even the most abrasive of souls can encounter the undomesticated love of God.

Let Us Go and Embrace
So let us fling wide the doors to every bleeding dysfunction and unrent garment. No stigma or mistreatment is too severe to be outdone by the furious love of Christ in us. For this is why we were called, to have our hearts ruined for the lovely, and so remade that our lives become a sanctuary for the unlovely. Yes, this path is arduous and our failures will be many, but best to limp along this rugged way, enacting the reckless love that ransomed our unlovely souls. In doing so, we are pulled deeper into the Way that recasts us from sin’s refusal to God’s rekindled glory.

Dear friend, I speak to you as one embraced by God’s love while utterly unlovely. Is not this the heart of the Gospel we have received while mired in our misery and sin, Christ’s lavish affections pursued us? So now, as redeemed recipients of scandalous grace, will we not rise and extend that same unshockable compassion? Will we not become hospitable rebels, rejecting every religious impulse to sequester ourselves among the polished and proper? May we be ruined for a safe Christianity that selects only the respectable as neighbors. For the pathway of Calvary calls us to reach hands towards the abrasive, the addicted, and the abused, to have our pious sensibilities rocked by those still shackled in coarse prisons of pain. This path is the crucible that purifies us as Christ’s true ambassadors. So let us go, my friends, and embrace the easily embraced no longer. In losing our “saintly” life, we will find it.