By Ryan Rasmussen
Quite possibly the scariest moment in my life came at age 22, whereupon graduating from Bible college, I was embarking upon my first full-time ministry. I had taken a job as youth pastor at a little church just north of Indianapolis, Indiana. The church sat comfortably between cornfields and was on the outskirts of a blue-collar factory town the Beach Boys used to sing about (Kokomo). The people were nice, the church was great, but I still felt all alone in this new world I had taken by storm.
In an effort to kill time and distract myself from the fact I had no friends, I worked exceptionally long hours at the church and watched more than my fair share of The Real World on MTV (it was a dark time for me). Finally””through a guy who knew some guys””I was invited to hang out and eat chips and salsa with a rowdy group of vegans in an old, beat-up house that sat next to an abandoned factory turned antique mall.
These guys were different from my friends at Bible college. They played in a hard-core band that was pretty popular in the area and often went on short road tours. It seemed as though some of them didn”t bathe, and they all held a strong conviction that it was wrong to eat meat, or any product that came from an animal, for that matter. Their jeans were tight, they were covered in tattoos, and they wore tattered hoodies like it was their dress code.
One more thing””they weren”t Christians. Many of them had been at one time, but had since fallen off the wagon. I”m not sure why they fell away, but after a few conversations, it was obvious that faith in Jesus was something left in the past, like fond memories or old Polaroids.
Shortly after being introduced to this ragtag, fun-loving group, I was being invited to shows and receiving text messages to come play poker or meet them for lunch at Panera (it”s a good place for vegans””lots of bread and soup). I found it interesting how open they were to welcome me””this complete stranger, and a pastor at that””into their circle of friends.
Slowly but surely, I began to feel accepted by my hard-core friends, even though I was in no way hard-core. As the saying goes, I saw firsthand how “all truth can be God”s truth.” Without knowing it, my vegan friends began to teach me things about Jesus while in no way professing that Jesus mattered to them in the slightest.
They Welcomed Me
Of course, it was a little awkward in the beginning. I didn”t understand the inside jokes, and sometimes when playing poker I would misdeal, which was a big no-no. But I never felt like I was intruding or didn”t belong. I remember thinking about some of the churches I had been a part of that could take a page or two from my new friends” book. There was no judgment because I believed something different; I was simply welcome to do life with them.
They Listened
The lead singer (or screamer) of the band was a guy named Ben. Ben had what I would call an odd obsession with Avril Lavigne at that time, and talked me into taking a short road trip with him to see her perform in Cincinnati. I honestly had very little desire to see Avril, and, to say the least, I felt a little out of place in our front-row, standing-room-only sea of 12-year-old girls screaming, “Did you think I was gonna give it up to you?!”
I was willing though, to put myself through a teenybopper concert to spend some time with a friend. My favorite part of that trip to Cincinnati was the conversation Ben and I had during the five-hour, round-trip drive. I shared with him what I believed about God and Jesus, and why I thought it mattered; and he shared with me about friendship and why he”s a vegan. We never pushed our beliefs on each other””we just listened.
It was nice. We didn”t scream or yell or debate; we asked questions and had dialogue. Again, I thought of how the church could learn a thing or two from my friend Ben, and I remember thanking Jesus for that night.
They Weren”t Concerned with Stuff
Our culture feeds us this lie that our value is found in stuff””more specifically, how much stuff we have and how much it”s worth. We are conditioned to think that our worth is determined by the size of our house, the type of car we drive, and the thickness of our wallet. I think sometimes we forget that Jesus was homeless and that one of the things he spoke about most frequently was finances and the accumulation of “stuff.” It wasn”t that Jesus wanted his followers to be poor; rather, he knew the one area of idolatry we were most prone to fall into was worship of money and the things we can get with it.
My friends cared very little about “stuff,” and that amazed me. They had other areas of interest, like music, art, and relationships. They certainly didn”t base their self-worth or value on how much they had. On the contrary, they found creative ways to enjoy life and seemed to embrace the little things you and I have a tendency to overlook as we attempt to climb the proverbial corporate ladder.
They Valued Community
When I first shared chips and salsa with my tattooed friends, I wasn”t aware they all lived in that little house next to the antique mall. Turns out they were sharing bedrooms and crashing in closets, making a way for as many to stay there as possible.
I”ll be honest, it didn”t seem like the most comfortable living arrangement, and I”m fairly confident I”d go crazy living in a house with that many people. Yet, I couldn”t help but see the value in how they approached community. They were more than just friends living in a house together; they treated one another as family.
I started to wonder whether I embraced my brothers and sisters in Christ as people I simply saw at church on Sundays, or as true family (which is an image used throughout Scripture when talking about the church).
They Had No Agenda
In the book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller talks about why he had a problem with some churches: “I felt like people were trying to sell me Jesus. . . . Did they have to talk about spirituality like it”s a vacuum cleaner? I never felt like Jesus was a product. I wanted him to be a person.”
Too often in the church we approach relationships with nonbelievers with an agenda””conversion. Of course I”m not saying we shouldn”t desire to bring our friends to Jesus, but I think we can all agree that friendship with a hidden agenda is a pretty shallow friendship.
My vegan friends never pushed a “no meat” agenda on me. My status with them was never based on whether I agreed with their philosophies. They simply accepted me. Their agenda was friendship; no strings attached.
Once again, I wondered what the church would look like if we loved people for who they were, not who we wanted them to be.
Sometimes God grabs our attention in ways we don”t expect. I would have never thought God would use my nonbelieving friends to teach me so much about what my belief should look like.
Ryan Rasmussen serves as teaching pastor with Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Frederick, Colorado.
First, your article reminds me of Romans 2, where Paul praised the Gentiles for doing by nature what the Jews should have done by the teaching of the law. True, more than we would like to admit, people of the world can teach Christians a thing or two about what it means to love.
Yet, we should not be too impressed by the behavior of a nihilistic culture. The tolerance you felt was an apathetic tolerance, not a principled one. When someone doesn’t believe in anything, other beliefs are easily tolerated– not for principle, but for pragmatism. Christians practice tolerance motivated by love, not apathy.
Jesus taught us that He brings a sword– not peace. In other words, a nihilistic culture is threatened when someone claims to be exclusive truth. That got Jesus crucified.
So, it is much easier to be tolerant out of nihilistic pragmatism. Much more discernment is demanded to be tolerant (or not) out of Godly principles. That’s what I Jesus taught me about Jesus.