The ugly bride...

I love my brother Jordan. He is only fifteen months older than me. We are different in almost every way, yet we still manage to have a meaningful relationship. I spent years treating my brother poorly, which is why we were not friends until a year after he left for college. I certainly regret those years now.

One of the biggest differences between my brother and I is our faith. I claim myself as a Christ-follower. Jordan believes otherwise. When I reflect on how two individuals can come from the same household and operate under different beliefs, I come up short of definite answers. Yet I think about my brother and sometimes I cannot blame him for stepping away from Christianity. We saw many ugly things growing up in the church.

It does not take long to find the ugliness. The national news media jumps on every sex scandal in the Christian faith. It grieves me that such things happen. My brother and I have seen our own versions of sex scandals in churches. We have seen politics at work in churches. We have seen pastors pushed out of their positions in churches. We have seen congregations blind to the ways of their leadership in churches.

In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller shared how he built a confessional with some friends and placed it outside on his college campus. The irony of the confessional was that instead of having students come in and repent of sins, Don and his friends apologized to their fellow students for the shortcomings in the Christian faith. It was a beautiful portion of the book.

Even now I am still processing the ugliness I run into. Just a few weeks ago I was stunned by the news of an ugly situation involving a former pastor. Faith shaking ugliness. Yet when I compare my brother's exposure to my own, I feel like I experienced beauty amidst ugliness whereas he never did. He was served straight mess while growing up in the church. He was not loved while growing up in the church.

So my brother: We function on completely different spiritual plans. I am still not sure how that happened. Yet I know this... I love him now more than I ever have before and he is one of my favorite people walking this earth. And for any addition I have contributed to the ugliness he experienced, I am sorry.

Ugly, tainted, flawed. The church of Jesus Christ. I still want to believe in you despite the hundreds of reasons why I shouldn't.