So we have an evangelist on campus this week. By this, I mean the type of person who stands on the quad and denigrates the people who come to watch the show. Usually, they focus on calling people out for sexual sins that the evangelist assumes all of the students are indulging in, whether or not there is any basis for the accusation. After all, dramatic sins draw bigger crowds. Who cares if they’re actually real?

The next step, after denigrating the crowd, or a segment of it (sorority girls, today) is to start calling out people because they’re not cleaning themselves up and acting right. The actual message of Christ’s death on the cross is sometimes covered, but often glossed over with the evangelist demanding conversion without really explaining why Christ came, why he died, why he rose, what it means to repent and accept him.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a proponent of a gospel that centers purely on God’s love without remembering his justice, but a method of “evangelism” that focuses purely on judgment without mentioning God’s love seems at best counterproductive. My heart breaks each year as I see college students repelled and turned away from Christianity by these people whose avowed purpose is to attract them to Christ.

If you are trying to reach non-Christians for Christ, I ask that you remember a few things:

• Righteousness and love are both parts of God’s character. You can’t leave either one out.
• People don’t listen very well when they’re offended.
• God created all of us and loves all of us equally. White culture is no better than any other culture. White people have no special relationship with Christ or the Bible. The church in Ethiopia was established long before the church in northern Europe (or North America).
• Jesus confronted self-righteous religious people, not sinners. He told sinners the truth, but in a kind and compassionate way, often also meeting their physical and/or emotional needs.
• Many people do not understand the gospel, even people raised in a “Christian” environment. Take time to explain what Christ did and why in detail.
• You don’t clean fish before you catch them. It is not our job to make people righteous. They can’t be righteous without Christ, no matter how hard they or we try.

The reality is that even when you’re talking to someone you don’t know, establishing common ground and talking from that bit of relationship is essential. Look at Christ’s and the apostle’s miracles, which often served as the opening for the truth to be shared. Look at Paul’s sermon in Athens found in Acts 17:22-34 where he established common ground in talking about the altar to an unknown god before sharing the gospel.

Most of all, please, please, please don’t come to my campus and drive students further from Christ instead of inviting them to meet him.

Have you ever just wanted to quit something? Your job, school, a relationship, a hobby you used to love, life itself? I know I’ve been there. High school was challenging for me, not academically, but in other ways. I’ve always been grateful that I knew that my parents would be devastated if I actually acted on the desire to just end everything. I learned to dislike myself less and trust God more, partly thanks to guidance from some older MK cousins one summer at our annual camp. But I still had low spots. There was this relationship in college. I’m not sure which of us was worse for the other, but it was not good. Free advice: if the friends who really care about you all think he’s an obnoxious jerk, he may or may not be an obnoxious jerk, but I guarantee that he’s not good for you. End it!

As an adult with a fully developed frontal cortex and a closer walk with God, I don’t tend to fall that far into depression any more, though there are still times when I want to go hide in a nice, quiet, dark room for about a month. And there was one time when circumstances at work led to several weeks of half the sleep I need where I was back to wanting to lie down and die. As Christians, I think we find the thought of such deep depression shocking. We should find it shocking, but we also need to recognize it as part of the human condition and try to deal with it as God would.

But how do we know how God wants it handled?

Well, it turns out that there were committed followers of God who wanted to lie down and die in the Bible. Now some of us may remember that Job reached a low spot and wished that he had never been born, but he had a pretty good excuse, right. After all, God gave permission for Satan to take everything away but his life, including his health. However, there’s another Old Testament figure who is more surprising, especially in context. In I Kings 18, Elijah confronts Ahab, has a big showdown with the prophets of Baal that involves God sending fire to burn up Elijah’s sacrifice, and sees God end an extended drought. Then at the beginning of the next chapter, Jezebel threatens to kill Elijah, leading to: “Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.’ And he lay down and slept under a broom tree.” I Kings 19:3-5a (ESV).

I find tremendous irony in the concept that Elijah’s fear in response to Jezebel threatening his life leads him to ask God to kill him. Sounds like depression to me.

But the really cool thing here is how God responds. “And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Arise and eat.’ And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.” I Kings 19: 5b-6 (ESV). The angel doesn’t confront Elijah at this point, doesn’t even try to encourage him verbally, just gives him food and water and lets him sleep again. After a bit, the angel wakes him again and has him eat some more, at which point, he runs for 40 days and nights. That was apparently quite the meal.

The rest of this chapter is better known. Elijah finds a cave. God comes and asks what he’s doing there, and Elijah complains. “He said, ‘I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.’” I Kings 19:10 (ESV). God tells Elijah to go out and wait. A wind, an earthquake, and a fire come; God is in none of those, but is in the still, small voice. Then God and Elijah repeat the earlier question and answer word for word.

It strikes me as important that God still doesn’t directly answer Elijah’s complaint. Instead, he gives Elijah a bunch of instructions: next steps, if you will. However, those instructions include getting a new helper and successor in Elisha. Only at the end of God’s speech does he point out that Elijah was never truly alone, since there are another 7000 people who have remained true to the the Lord.

I love this story for two reasons. First, it’s really comforting to know that I’m not alone: that even one of the greatest prophets of God could get seriously depressed. Second, I love seeing how God handles the situation. Elijah’s true needs are met. The rebuke is gentle and only after the needs are met.

Perhaps, as Christ-followers, we should let this story guide our actions regarding depression. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating wallowing in depression. That’s a miserable place to be, and we do have a God who can meet our needs and help us out of that place of pain. However, I think our treatment of others, including fellow Christians, should be informed by God’s handling of Elijah.

Human beings like rules. You may not feel that way. Certainly there are times when rules chafe. And, of course, we are seldom successful in following all of the rules that surround us. However, we do have a tendency to like black and white more than gray. We see that in toddlers (and old children) as they push boundaries trying to learn where the real boundaries are. I see it at work in a desire to create a specific rule to prevent future problems whenever someone behaves inappropriately or unprofessionally. In many cases, we’re making specific rules to make a general principle more concrete and specific.

The tendency to create more specific rules is certainly seen in the behavior of certain groups of ancient Jews. God said, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” Exodus 20:7a (ESV). They responded by creating rules about not saying or writing the name of God at all, in order to ensure that it couldn’t be taken in vain. God said, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work” Exodus 20:8-10a (ESV). They responded by defining many different kinds of work and determining how much activity of each kind counted as work. They defined exactly how far one could go from a residence on the Sabbath. They also defined what could be counted as a residence and used that to get around the distance that could be traveled. We see use of rules that go beyond the overarching principle and rules that are used to circumvent the intent of the overarching principle.

So how did Jesus react to all of this? In relation to the Sabbath rules, he made Pharisees very angry by healing on the Sabbath in clear violation of their rules. He also defended his disciples for doing (rather minimal) work to obtain food on a Sabbath, and said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” Mark 2:27b. In general, he was very unimpressed, sometimes deeply angered, by the Pharisees, their rules, and the way they used the rules to do wrong rather than right.

But didn’t God give the ten commandments? Absolutely, those and more. But, you see, even though he gave us laws to help us understand right from wrong, God has always cared about relationship. We should remember that before the laws came God’s relationship with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses. The greatest commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” Matthew 22:37 (ESV). “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” Matthew 22:39 (ESV). These are about relationship. Actions are intended to come out of the relationship.

Rules can be useful things, but what rules have we created that become painful religiosity beyond anything God intended? And what rules have we created that we use to circumvent the intent of God’s commands? I would encourage myself and all of you to commit each day to our relationship with Christ and to the two greatest commandments and be willing to live in a world that may feel a little more gray, but refuses to lose sight of the Spirit behind the Law.

Have you ever felt like the stranger in a group? I know I have. Part of that is because we moved when I was growing up. A lot (only 9 schools in 8 cities/towns pre-college, but on average more than one move per year in my youth). And as an adult, I’ve spent a lot of time among people who are shocked to think that someone with a Ph.D. could actually believe in the literal truth of the Bible. I’ve also been in a number classrooms, meetings, etc. where I was the only female in the room. However, there are two times in my life when that feeling of being the stranger has been especially strong.

The first was an extended period: the two years we lived in a small town where my father was pastoring the First Baptist Church. We weren’t from around there, and I was encouraged to recognize every flaw that I have as well as to believe that some of my best attributes (such as my intelligence) were also flaws. I learned about hypocrisy, since the deacons’ kids treated me very differently under their parents’ eyes than they did at school. I had never been so grateful to move again in my short life as when we left that place, though I did get a couple of chances to recognize the blessings of my life when we visited later and I saw the limited opportunities of those I left behind compared to what I’d been given. I also got to see how much people’s perception of us depends on external things. The first time we went back, I was officially a “Missionary Kid,” but we hadn’t been out of the US yet. All of a sudden I was a visiting dignitary instead of the outcast kid to abuse as much as possible, even when the adults weren’t around.

The second time I felt that strong “I don’t belong here” reaction was just a split second. I was walking with a couple of friends in Blok M, which is (or at least was) a shopping area in Jakarta. These happened to be female friends who were both several inches shorter than I. I looked around and saw this sea of the tops of heads (I’m not taller than all Indonesians by any means, but I am taller than a lot of them). I had this sudden sense of sticking of the top of the crowd that was very unnerving. Looking back, I find it very odd that my “moment of strangeness” in Indonesia was about my height (which is only 5’8″) instead of about the pale skin and blonde hair that was constantly noticed and remarked on.

I think most people have had some experience of being the stranger. I also think that almost all people have been part of the group that had a stranger walk in. Being a stranger can be difficult and unnerving, but it doesn’t have to be painful. However, the pain involved, while it can be ameliorated by the stranger’s attitude, is largely dictated by the behavior of the group. In that small town, I was going to be a stranger because I wasn’t “from around here.” But I’ve been new and not from around here many other times in my life that don’t stick out in my memory because people tried to welcome me and let me into their group instead of making sure I knew that I didn’t belong.

So what does God have to say about this? How should we respond to the strangers who come into our midst? How should we treat those who dress differently, act differently, or just don’t look like us? We have clues in the behavior and words of Christ as he spoke with the Samaritan woman and told the story we call “The Good Samaritan.” We have clues in Acts as Peter is encouraged to visit Cornelius and Philip to witness to the Ethiopian eunuch. But we really don’t need to look for clues: God was actually very explicit all the way back in the law: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself” Leviticus 19:34a (ESV). What would our churches look like if we obeyed that verse?