An open letter to the Church

Dear Church,

First of all, I don’t really like open letters. So it’s rare, and strange, to find myself writing one, but my love for you has compelled me.

I’ve been going to Sunday services since before I was born. Growing up, we went every time the doors were open—three services a week—and many times when the doors weren’t open. My father gave much of his time helping build church buildings and as an elder and treasurer. My mother taught Sunday school, served as a secretary, and did a host of other functions.

I was the kid who had to stay late because his parents had a meeting and still got upset he had to leave. Church, I loved you. And I love you to this day.

You have formed me in so many ways. Singing the hymns with you over and over again—words I barely understood at first—shaped my soul in ways that reverberate in my adulthood. Hearing you preach the gospel—from flawed but godly messengers—has implanted in my heart a deep love for Jesus. And having the chance to help lead a small part of you has been one of the joys of my life.

I love you more today than I ever have. I want my kids to grow up hearing those hymns and hearing that gospel and drinking that cup. And I want my friends and neighbors to come to Sunday services with me to hear about this man from Nazareth who died and paid for my sins.

We’ve asked Jesus, rhetorically, “Who is my neighbor?”, looking for loopholes in his command to love.

We minister in a world fractured by the Fall. All around us and blinking every minute, it seems, on our smartphones, we see tragic results of sin. Racism, violence, famine, abortion, sexual assault, poverty, war. The strong prey on the weak. The privileged pass by the vulnerable. The corrupt mock and displace those with character. And you, church, are where people find hope, and forgiveness, and freedom, and wholeness.

And yet as much as I love you, I know your flaws. Our flaws. We can often allow our tribal instincts and prejudices to blind us to what Jesus is calling us to do in the world. We can be swayed by cultural winds. We are often loud when we should be quiet and silent when we should be shouting.

We need a dignity revolution

So, church, you—we—need a fresh approach to engaging the world around us. And yet this fresh approach has its roots in the oldest book of the Bible. Genesis opens with a stunning, radical, visionary picture of human dignity. Unlike any other part of creation, God has stamped upon people his image. He sculpted humans from the dust of the ground and breathed into us the breath of life.

Church, one of our best best gifts to the world is a robust view of human dignity. And one of our greater failings is when we keep quiet about it, fail to apply it, or (worst) forget all about it.

So my hope for you is simple: I long for us to recover the beautiful, robust, rich doctrine of dignity. I pray we allow the imago dei to disrupt our politics and cause us to recognize the humanity of those we are tempted to marginalize, to come alongside the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. I pray we recover what it means to be human to help a world that has lost what it means to be human—so that in a disconnected, frayed, and uncivilized public square, we are known for modeling, in our conversations and in our communities, that rich biblical vision for community.

At its best, this is what we have done. It has often been Christians who have come alongside the sick and the dying in times when no one else would, who have started hospitals and clinics, who have championed civil rights movements and worked to abolish injustices suc as the slave trade in England. And today it is often Christians who are the first to offer relief after natural disasters, and who give up everything to move to developing countries to provide immunizations to disease, to bring fresh water to villages, and to triage in war-torn countries.

And yet we must admit that at our worst, we’ve often been like that priest or Levite on the Jericho road. Instead of seeing the humanity of those who suffer, we’ve found convenient, religious-sounding reasons to pass on by. We’ve asked Jesus, rhetorically, “Who is my neighbor?”, looking for loopholes in his command to love.

I’m not saying that doing this will win the favor of the masses. The good news of the gospel will always be considered radical to those who are far from God. It will always cut against the ethos of the age. But may our radicalness be caused because we are like Jesus, and not because we have imbibed the bigotries of the hour or the greed of the age. May we be different because we are a small and blurry glimpse of that glorious kingdom to come.

Church, I’d love for you to join a dignity revolution. Because, church, you’re the only one who can.

Yours in Christ,

Daniel Darling, Vice-President for Communications of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Pastor of Teaching and Discipleship at Green Hill Church, Mt Juliet, Tennessee.

In The Dignity Revolution, Daniel shows us that each one of us can be, and are called to be, part of this new movement—a human dignity revolution that our societies desperately need, and how we—you—are uniquely placed to join.