Burn Lines.

Self-disclosure is the name of the game, I suppose, since I claim to be one of those “bloggers.” But self-disclosure is not on the list of my favorite things to do. Nevertheless, here we go:

I have been a prejudiced person.

I have held beliefs about people I did not know, cultures I did not live in, mindsets I did not understand. I thought my knowledge of these things was extensive, so therefore my judgments about them must be true, I convinced myself. I was among the number of those who would make comments about “those people.”

Whoever “those people” were. It didn’t matter what they called themselves; I had an opinion I thought was valid, educated. After all, I have been everywhere and done everything and had every experience, right?

Ummmm….maybe not.

So this summer I go overseas. Thinking I know what to expect. Thinking it will be like things I have seen before, thinking it will be kind of like parts of the United States because, people from over there live here, too. So surely I understand what I am getting myself into.

And I was absolutely aware of what my ideas were about them.

Can I just tell you I had bad ideas about them?

Where I got these ideas, who knows? Maybe the news (which, why any of us would believe any news is just BEYOND me. If we think there is some news out there that isn’t propaganda of some kind, promoting someone’s agenda, I feel like we all must be living in a grand state of denial, but I digress.). Or maybe I heard these thoughts and views from friends, speakers, other people’s stories, etc etc. Or maybe it all came from a fear of the unknown, of fear of those things we only whisper—or protest—about. The source is irrelevant, my preconceived notions are the issue at hand.

So I get there, and in a matter of almost no time at all I am startled to realize that all I ever thought about certain people was probably wrong. All the issues in my mind that were so cut and dry, black and white, easily fixable if all they would do is listen to me----yeah. Maybe not.

Is it possible I have been wrong all these years? And then what’s worse, I have to ask myself if I have spread those beliefs and notions to others as if they are gospel?

When I was out West this summer I was visiting with a new friend who works for a ministry that tries to bring religious leaders of different denominations together. The topic of revival came up.

“Why is it that we only have local, secluded revivals any more these days?" I said. "I mean, we see really good things happening in one church, but just down the street at a different church it seems like nothing is going on. How are we not meeting in the middle? I mean, it’s the same God, the same Jesus, the same Holy Spirit doing crazy work!”

His answer caught me off guard. “It’s simple, really. Do you know how when you are fighting a forest fire they put most of their energies not to throwing water on it, but to creating burn lines? Well, it’s like that. The reason revival doesn’t meet in the middle is because there are already burn lines created. See, the devil knows that he can’t put out the fire of the Spirit, but he can create a burn line. He can build up prejudices in someone’s mind; he can say ‘Oh, well those people are Baptists. Catholics. Methodists. Reformed. Pentecostals. We don’t go there.’ So----we don’t go there. And the fire stays behind the burn line until it runs out of fuel there and then it dies. That’s why we have no unified revival.”

Whoa.

My mind was blown!

But how seriously true.

 And as I was pondering this thinking, “Yes yes how true,” that’s when it hit me like a freight train:

I had done a good job of quenching the fire: I had created my own burn lines.
Sure, maybe I had never said to my church’s outreach community, “Oh, let’s not join forces with that church, they don’t feel the same way about the Holy Spirit that we do,” but I know for a fact I had thought, “Yeah, I don’t socialize in THAT neighborhood; I don’t agree with THOSE people.”

Shame on me. I had my ideas, my {un}educated notions, my predisposed beliefs, and I let them stop me from going there. I let it stop me from seeing those people. And not just seeing their need—Oh I was AWARE of the depth of their need, that’s why I stayed away—but from seeing THEM. As humans. As people. People with thoughts and feelings and ways of doing things and people not really too terribly different from me, even if our means to reach our ends are different.

I didn’t care who they claimed to be; I thought I knew the actual truth about them.

I didn’t actually know, by the way. In case you were wondering.

As much as I don’t want to admit it, even to myself, I must.
I didn’t know about far-away cultures, which leads me to assume that I probably don’t know about “those” neighborhoods in my town, either.

A few weeks ago I was reading in one of the Gospels and I came to the well-known story of where Jesus casts out that legion of demons and they run into pigs and then rush off the side of a cliff. But this time I was alerted to the early description in the story.

“When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!’ For Jesus had said to him, ‘Come out of this man, you evil spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’” (Mark 5:2-9)

Isn’t that so interesting? Also so harrowingly sad?

I mean, people tried to chain him. They would go to him to bind him.
Yes, I realize they were doing it for their own safety. Yes, I realize he was someone to be afraid of.
How brilliant then, when Jesus shows up and he IS NOT AFRAID OF HIM.
He doesn’t make Jesus run away. Jesus doesn’t want to bind him. Jesus doesn’t want to push him off to the side. He doesn’t say, “Go back to the tombs where you came from.”

One of the main things I love about Jesus is that he doesn’t get intimidated. People groups and religions that are different than mine don’t scare him. Jesus doesn’t look at people and say, “Oh, well you belong to that group, and I don’t really go there. I don’t go to YOUR people.” He doesn’t refuse to socialize with someone. He doesn’t turn up his nose at someone the way I am sure the snob in me does.

Jesus doesn’t create burn lines.

Jesus asks what their names are. Just like he did with that man.

He doesn’t bind, he doesn’t make go them away, he doesn’t run away, he doesn’t tie up people in chains. He heals.
He takes away the reason they make people afraid.

Jesus doesn’t have favorites. Isn’t that brilliant? For who is to say that, if he did, I would be one that he would have chosen? His choosings are mysterious things, I understand that. But that he has chosen any of us is nothing short of miraculous. That he has “asked what your name is” is simply the greatest news on this earth.

That he didn’t pay attention to the burn line surrounding you, well, it’s something beautiful enough to cry about.

And then there is the sobering thought that we, the ones Jesus has called by name, we always think we are the one in the chains, the one who needs to be freed. But have you ever thought that you might actually be the one putting someone in a chain? Asking someone to just go leave, “Go back where you came from,” thinking that things were better when they weren’t here…?
Why do we always think we are the good soil? Surely we don’t get that idea from the Bible.

I don’t even know what else to say.

If nothing I have said makes any sense to you, please know this: Jesus doesn’t have group preferences. He doesn’t think some people are “enemies.”

I will close with this passage in Revelation that moves me to tears lately.

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘ Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” (Revelation 7:9-10)

I am a weepy mess.

Because, here’s the deal: Jesus doesn’t care what group you have put yourself in, whose you claim to be. He doesn’t care who you have chained. He doesn’t care what burn lines you think are true, right, real, or actually just afraid of. He doesn’t pay attention to our thoughts about certain people groups.
There is no favoritism in his mind of who will stand before his throne, saying about him, “Salvation is yours, good God.” He will call from every group. From behind every burn line we create.

And if HE creates no burn lines, if he sees people as people rather than as members of a group, then how in the world can WE, people who are nothing but loved and safe in his hand, have any thoughts different than his?