Letter to Duluth's The Reader Weekly on October 19, 2010

As a pastor of a local church, I want to say how much I appreciated Gary Kohls' piece in the October 7 Weekly Reader titled "In Defense of Christian Nonviolence - The Peace Plan of God." It was a refreshing and helpful presentation of Jesus' message in a generation (rightfully, in most cases) marked by cynicism and anger toward Christianity and "the Church". Kohls' article, contrasted with the one written on the previous two pages ("The Planet Glise 581g May Be The Second Bible Earth" by Ed Raymonds), points out that the trouble with faith is not faith itself but when faith is not lived out in genuine and loving ways. The answer is not to throw out Jesus or faith or the Bible as some would contend; it is, rather, to recapture the purity of the message and live a more authentic faith.

As a local church community we just worked through a series of messages titled NotChristian where we explored some of the the dissonance between modern Christians' actions and Jesus' teachings in order to recapture a more authentic and kinder faith (listen at www.hillsidealive.com). In a 2007 nationwide Barna research poll, people who self-identified as being "outside the church" labeled Christians as "sheltered, hypocritical, judgmental, anti-homosexual, too political and pushing their beliefs on others." Christians have a sizable stigma in society today and we wanted to be profoundly honest about where we may have gotten off track so we could take responsibility, change our ways and live rightly.

As Kohls pointed out, this dissonance between Jesus' teachings and modern Christianity causes many evils in our world, as pure Christianity has been continually hijacked by advocates for agendas of war, oppression, political power, economics, slavery, etc. Some Christians have errantly tried to conform the Message to meet their needs and fit their agendas which only pollutes the message and harms others. For those of us who may have been hurt by the church or are tired of religion and / or Christianity, and yet have a hunger for vibrant spirituality, let's rediscover Jesus and his teachings in the manner Kohls aptly invites us to. As we do this, we'll find that the "real" Jesus is actually pretty amazing and can lead us to some spiritually powerful ideas that will prove helpful to our own lives and help to repair and revolutionize the wider world as we know it.

Sincerely,
Rev. Ryan Bauers
Lead Pastor
Hillside Church
Downtown Duluth
www.hillsidealive.com