Messed Up People

Once in a while I’ll lose one of my readers. The reason they often give is almost these exact words:

The people who read your blog are really messed up!

I’m always amazed by that because that is exactly the same reason why people would leave my church. They would say:

The people who go to your church are really messed up!

At first this criticism really concerned me. Because it was true! But then I really thought about it. One of my personal convictions is that everyone is messed up to some extent. Some of us prefer to or are better at concealing it. Sure, the people who went to my church were messed up and the people who read my blog are messed up. But the truth of the matter is that perhaps the people who went to my church felt free to bare their messed up-ness. Perhaps the people who read nakedpastor feel free to bare their messed up-ness. That is, people feel free to be who they are with their own personalities, opinions, lifestyles, orientations, and so on. Just like nakedpastor’s comment section where you are free to express yourself, I used to have what I called “open round tables” at the church where anyone at all could come and express their opinions. You must be prepared for unedited feedback and reactions, but that’s the cost for living an unedited life in an unedited community. The trick is and always will be how to do this without causing damage to others.

It can get messy. Even chaotic. That’s being real in a real world.

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