I go to McDonalds more often than I should. So sue m-- I mean, what's not to like? Aside from the delectable french fries, they still maintain a fairly stocked dollar deals menu. Which isn't nothing. I digress.

So usually I'm driving around in the bright sunlight, and I have sunglasses on. But then I walk into McDonalds. And the problem isn't that I can't see anything - all the lights are on, and it's still pretty bright.

Here's the thing: I can't read the menu. The screen is all dark.

The thing with my sunglasses is, they're polarized. Which means they filter out certain kinds of light. Let me geek out for a second here: light comes at us as waves of energy. Some of those waves go up and down, and some go sideways. Polarized sunglasses take one of those directions out of the equation. That helps cut out a lot of bright sunlight and glare.

The TV panels used for the menus are also polarized (as all LCDs are). But they're oriented so that they cut out the light that my sunglasses would let through. So they take out the up-and-down light, and my sunglasses take out the sideways light, and there's nothing left.

No light left, so I don't see a menu. Just a black box, even though I can see everything around it. And yes, I can turn my head sideways - and there's the menu (sideways). Because then the screen and the sunglasses are "in phase."

The church in the West is at risk these days. Risk of not taking life in the fog seriously - risk of dismissing a significant number of people both within and outside of the church.

This is life in the fog: walking into a place where true community among God's people should exist, but we can't see the menu. We're out of phase, for whatever reason. Our light doesn't reach them, their light doesn't reach us.

What's on the menu at church? Well, feeling what we're supposed to feel. Seeing God's work in our lives. Being drawn to immersion in scripture. Being lifted up by worship rather than it being a mere exercise. Experiencing a relief from our negative self talk by hearing and believing who we are in Jesus.

I can tell you that for some of us, it's the lack of feeling that drives how we feel. Some signals have gotten crossed in our brains, in our neural networks, and we are impressed with an awareness that something is off kilter. We feel like something is wrong with us in those times, and we experience a shame of being less-than. We feel an anxiety of wondering if we'll ever be "in sync" with other believers. We have fear, sometimes, that the fact that we don't feel it means we don't have it.

We're left trying to piece together the menu from things we see around us. The signs and signals. The social norms. We find rhythms where we can at least see and understand how "normal" people respond to everything. Sometimes a new pastor comes in with the best intentions and shakes things up, changes the signs that we had learned to count on. Then we're more disoriented again, and have to reconstruct things once more. None of it feels like true community, because it's a replica.

It doesn't happen to us. It feels like we have to make it happen. Which makes it feel less real.

Have you ever felt "out of phase" with the Christian community around you? For a lot of people who grew up in church, they might say they feel out of phase with the world. That's fine for what it is, but there's a lot of us who don't quite seem to fit in with the church either. It's like we live in the margin between two worlds that don't overlap. Like a Venn diagram that has space in the middle, and there we are.

And some of us can even look at it sideways for a while and function. But it's a lot of work and a pain in the neck.

It takes a long time and a lot of personal growth to realize that "out of phase" does not necessarily equal "wrong." The fact that we walk in and can't see the menu is actually valuable to the church. It's a blind spot that needs to be highlighted.

The church does not need to be an efficient machine that takes as many people as possible through a particular discipleship program that was shown to be statistically "effective." There are hundreds of books out there where the author thought their study of the Bible demonstrated the "right" way to set up and do church.

I guarantee you, for each one of those, there are people for whom it doesn't work. That the program doesn't enhance their spirituality and relational acumen. And that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those people. They show the blind spot in the teaching, and they're worth bringing along.

To be clear: we're not talking about specific points of doctrine here. Rather, our subject is the natural inclination to dismiss those who are not fitting in. Those who don't feel the "right" feelings at the right times. Those who ask the "wrong" questions at the wrong times. And those who respond to particular presentations of truth differently.

Back in 1988, John Carpenter made a movie with Roddy Piper called "They Live." Interestingly, the premise was also about special glasses - put them on, and you can see the world as it really is, taken over by aliens who lived among us. In government. In media. In business. All over.

Well, Roddy got to change things so that everyone saw what was going on. All of a sudden, everyone was in phase and knew who was human and who wasn't.

Someday, all of us will be in phase and see exactly who Jesus is. There is a strange comfort in the thought that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow - for once in civilization, humanity's collective response will match the call of reality. In current experience for many of us, we don't have that match. For me, in my personality, I get driven to try to get closer to that reality each day. And I'm frustrated to no end by my lack of vision. And by my seeming inability to live out the vision I know so far.

For now, here's the call: put on the glasses. Look for those in the church who are faithful but not feeling it. See how some of God's sheep are trapped between two worlds - out of phase with the world, and out of phase in the church. Let's be willing to hear about blind spots - past wrongs, present sins, and what we should fear for the future.

Jesus would go find these sheep. Will we?

References:

"Out Of Phase" by puck90 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

https://openclipart.org/detail/323704/vertically-polarized-light