Many Ideologies, One Christ

I had some interesting conversations with some students last night as we gathered to inform first-year students about the various Christian faith communities around UW.

In one of their conversations, I discussed how my particular community is often labelled as left-wing. A large reason for this is our focus on the poor; our willingness to partner with organizations like the UW Muslim Students Assn.; and our adamant belief that Jesus didn't come to start a new religion, but to actually shut down religion and initiate relationship as the way that we get right with God.

I was quick to point out that the last thing we want to be is a left-wing group. Our community is about Christ, pure and simple. As a result, it is so important that left and right-wing students alike feel comfortable being a part of our community. We are less about creating a particular social, cultural, and political bubble as we are about creating a place where everyone can feel safe to come and find Jesus.

Religion will often align itself with a particular ideology. All too often, that ideology includes judgement and hate of someone or something. It is so amazing to me that instead of advocating a particular political agenda or ideology, Jesus taught that if you love others in the radical way that he taught, you'll be following the right ideology. That's it. Love others and the rest will follow.

So with that in mind, it is so crucial that we invite everyone to experience Jesus in our community; regardless of their political or ideological leaning. When I read the Gospel stories, I don't see Jesus setting up some kind of qualifiers or criteria as to who gets to be around him. If anything, religious people had problems with the fact that Jesus would invite even the "wrong" types of people to be with him.

Therefore, if Jesus didn't seem to create communities where certain people were excluded, we should likely do the same with our own community. That's the idea, at least. We'll see how it goes!