Sometimes I cringe at the idea of having to carry the title Christian.

I love Jesus. It’s the church that irritates me; the family of believers who are supposedly carrying the word of Jesus to the world. Frankly, all I’ve seen lately is fighting inside the church walls and bickering over doctrine and beliefs.

I am not a huge fan of Christian radio anymore, since it all seems contrived and overly simplistic. However, I often find my radio tuned to it because I just can’t find anything better on, or I’m too lazy to pull out my iPod and make a decision on what I want to listen to. However, I do make sure my radio is tuned to WAYFM on my way home from work so I can catch Total Axxess. I love listening to this show because Wally, the host, is authentic and open in his faith. He shares his struggles openly and calls others out on their crap. He reminds me of my husband! Sometimes he shares some absolutely ridiculous stuff, but some days it’s just what I need. I was almost crying the other week from laughing so hard when they shared the autotuned double rainbow guy. It was a perfect way to pick up a not so great day.

Wally shared a scathing e-mail he had received yesterday. It was from a “Christian” who had made the mistake of listening to his show twice. He obviously didn’t enjoy what Wally had to say. He claimed that Christians tune in to hear uplifting music, not to hear Wally talk about himself. Then he made the declaration that the best thing Wally could do was to resign from his position at the station. What a great solution to this guy’s problem. Never mind the hundreds of other people that are actually encouraged by all that Wally shares.

This morning I was catching up on one of my favorite blogs, Stuff Christians Like. The author of this blog has poked fun at all the little things in church that drive me crazy, like mid prayer music that materializes out of nowhere. In the midst of all the satire, he still manages to come back to the meat of Christianity; God’s grace and how cool it is. One of the posts I read today referred back to an older post. He had received some interesting comments that disagreed with him, so he re-stated his original point. (Read the blog here if you’re interested.) In the comment section, the very first comment was someone who simply stated that he agreed with the original commenters. This then created a whole slew of come-backs, and it seemed like everyone was trying to “out-holy” the others.

Really? Is this what we’ve been reduced to? Whatever happened to building each other up? I’m all for constructive criticism, but when did we decide it was okay to attack each other for simply sharing our thoughts?

The service that I lead worship for is not a typical Sunday church service. In fact, it’s not even on Sunday. It’s on Friday night, and it’s for a group called Celebrate Recovery. This service is special to me because it’s not like Sunday church. In fact, it feels more like real church than Sunday church. On any given night, when you walk through the doors, you’ll see some pretty interesting people there. There are drug addicts, alcoholics, and some other kinda scary looking people. I’ve had men approach me to thank me for leading worship, and I’m really glad that we’re in a crowded room. I’m sure they have really shady pasts.

But the beauty of the program is that these people really get it. They don’t care about doctrine and what this verse is really saying. They are there because they want to be. God has saved them from the depths of despair, and they love Him deeply. They love the other people in the room because they have been real friends and have walked through some real icky times with them. When they share something deep and raw and opinionated, people simply say, “Thanks for sharing.” Period. There is no questioning if what they said is valid or wasn’t backed up properly by Scripture. They shared something from their hearts and are a better person for doing it.

I know that Christians need to be challenging each other and discussing hard issues. But let’s not be mean about it. Let’s not be self centered. If you feel your blood pressure rising over something someone has said, maybe it’s really from something going on in your life that hasn’t been properly dealt with. I know that’s often the case for me.

Let’s give each other the freedom to share what’s in our hearts without fear of judgement! I think Jesus would like that.