Comfort Zones

 3/7/18              Weasel & Liz   (video)             Early 20's

On closer look, the young couple I met on the sidewalk wasn’t what I expected.  The nature of street outreach requires that I often initiate conversations with people before I realize what I am getting myself into, and, besides, I believe the nature of our great commission as Christians requires that we often get out of our comfort zones, stepping out on faith to see how God might work in some of the most unlikely situations.

So the “couple” I met turned out to be a young man who introduced himself as “Weasel” and, underneath his lipstick and makeup, his transvestite boyfriend who introduced himself as “Liz”.  

There was a time when I would get very distracted by the outward appearances and behavior of people I talk with, but I’ve learned that these are usually only the signs or symptoms of something much deeper – their spiritual beliefs and understanding of God.  So my questions for Weasel and Liz were the same questions I ask most everyone – “What do you believe happens to us when we die, and how did you arrive at your present belief?”

I very quickly found out that Weasel rejects a concept of God that I don’t blame him for rejecting – the idea that God is like a nervous old man struggling to keep a tally on our behavior in order to use it against us in the end.  So many false ideas about God, which make it easy for people to reject, are based on judging God by human standards.   Who wouldn’t reject Weasel’s concept of God as being weak, petty, and vindictive?  And who would respect or fear such a deity, except maybe for the kind of nervousness one has to have around someone who is moody, unpredictable, and insecure?

I needed to focus on the basis of their understanding of God, not on their outward appearances or lifestyle choices. Does God struggle nervously to keep tabs on us?  Or is He just effortlessly all-knowing as a part of who He is, in the same effortless way gravity pulls us to earth?  Weasel, Liz and I had a good conversation about what it means to respect and fear such a God.  By establishing a stronger foundation about who God is and who we are in relation to Him, I didn’t have to sugar-coat other biblical truths about our accountability to Him, sin, judgment and hell.

I see some commonalities between this conversation and the story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10.  Early in his ministry, Peter was called in a vision to go to the house of a Roman centurion named Cornelius who, although he was a Gentile, was a “righteous and God-fearing man”.  As a devout Jew and now follower of Jesus, Peter stepped way out his comfort zone and into Zacchaeus’ house, where Zacchaeus and all of his family and friends welcomed him to see what he might have to say.

Peter didn’t often speak diplomatically, and he cut to the chase:  “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”

Peter went on to speak boldly about the things of God with this family because he knew them to be God-fearing.  At first I didn’t find that same fear of God in Weasel and Liz, because their idea of God needed to be corrected.  But eventually, once I had addressed that issue, I think they could actually see that God is to be respectfully feared and they actually cared what I as a conservative Christian had to say about other issues, including their homosexual behavior.  They may not have liked what I told them, but I believe they were listening. 

I hope I left them with a balanced understanding that God is our righteous judge but that He can also be our loving Father.  Some who watch our conversation may say I erred in that balance on the side of judgment, others on the side of love.  All I know is that stepping out of my comfort zone allowed me to speak some biblical truth into the lives of two very lost young men, and I believe God will work through that.