I love surprising people. Last month, as I waited for my shuttle from the Burbank airport to downtown Pasadena, I had a wonderful conversation with a woman. The more we talked, the more she began to share about her life, her children and some of her religious upbringing. I had already mentioned I was Presbyterian and starting seminary in the fall. As we started talking more and more about religion, she finally said, “And you know, I just hate organized religion.” And I responded, “So do I…”
Her response was priceless…it totally caught her off off guard. “Wait…you…I thought…what?” It was wonderful. And it totally helped keep our conversation going. I’m just reminded of the scene of the Confession booth in Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz” – a confession booth set up at a very “pagan” festival at Reed College, where the *CHRISTIANS* did the confessing. I think as Christians we do need to be confessing our heritage’s sins. I think we need to do more actual apologizing, rather than focus on learning bullet-proof apologetics. For me to agree with this woman on something she felt so passionate about, enabled us to continue the conversation in a spirit of unity on at least something. She didn’t like organized religion, and thus never wanted to go to a church again. I don’t like what religion has done to the church, and thus am deciding to commit the next 3-4 years of my life studying the church in preparation to become a part of the church (if God directs that way).
So while we didn’t necessarily mean the exact same thing – the fact that I was able to agree with her, kept her intrigued and interested in our conversation. No I didn’t convert her (and that wasn’t even the point of the conversation, or my interest in pursuing it)…but she was able to meet her first Christian who also hated organized religion and we were able to learn from one another.