Andrea Sanborn

A friend and I walked down to the county fair one day last summer, our conversation rich with gratitude for God’s friendship, and ours.

We strolled the midway, rounding the bend where booths sold trinkets, toys, and tee shirts. Ahead I saw a Christian booth, tucked in the far corner away from most of the fair traffic. I felt bad that they had been assigned the worst location at the fair. “Let’s go encourage them,” I said.

The woman under the canopy was glad to see us. Behind her, a nervous teen watched us curiously. We told her that we, too, believed in Jesus, and asked about their mission.

Out came the papers. Did we want to take a survey?

We went over the points of salvation. Sin. Jesus. The Cross. Check, check, check.

But the the questions kept coming. Baptism. Faith. Works. Her pen tapped the paper insistently. Tap, tap, tap. Finally she confidently launched into disputed doctrines. When I gently disagreed, she got aggressive. The pen kept tapping as she went on the attack. I glanced at my friend, tense with annoyance. Tap, tap, tap. Don’t you believe this? What about this? Don’t you believe what the Bible says?

I regretted stopping to encourage a fellow Christian. Glad, now, that their booth had been tucked away far from the crowds. It wasn’t easy, but we extricated ourselves from the situation as graciously as possible and walked away.

We Christians can sometimes be the best argument against belief, can’t we?

Thankfully, there was another booth at the fair. This one was also run by Christians. But instead of surveys, they were giving out love. Compassion. Dignity. Real help for struggling families, no strings attached. A ministry formed by churches banding together to make a positive difference for the vulnerable and needy through the love of Jesus.

It’s a heady feeling to think that we have all the answers. It’s also a dangerous place to think that God is small enough to be limited by our complete understanding.

The early church knew the danger of wandering off into the errors of their day, so they formulated creeds stating the indisputable necessities of the Christian faith. We still wander off, though, when we add this pet doctrine and that cultural preference to faith’s requirements. We may express our faith through these things, which is part of the wonderful diversity in the church. But when we weaponize them against others, we’ve gone too far.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the stunning simplicity of the gospel.

There are surprisingly few boxes to check for entrance into God’s kingdom. Jesus set out only two: love God with all that we are, and love others as ourselves. When asked exactly what works are required, Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) Jesus came to pay for all of our pride, hatred, and self-centeredness. All we need to do is believe it, turn from our old life, and accept the new, clean, free life He offers.

From that place of freedom and peace, then, we learn how to love. By reading the Bible, we come to understand God’s heart and what holiness looks like.

These two simple commands stimulate a beautiful variety of ways to live them out. It doesn’t matter how many good things we do, Scripture says, if we don’t have love.

I feel sad for my pen-tapping sister. I know I’ve fallen into a similar attitude at times, forsaking the simple joy of being loved for the lesser satisfaction of being right. I too have tap, tap, tapped my way through situations sometimes, accusing fellow believers in my heart, if not my words.

I hope that few people consented to take her survey, knowing that they would be shamed by the Gospel, instead of drawn to it.

We Christians stumble over ourselves on the road to sanctification, as we learn and grow in this new life. That is understandable. Too often the pride we preach against runs rampant through our own hearts, and we are blind to it. Growth in holiness is a gradual transformation.

But woe to us when we cause others to stumble over us, too.