The Safe Table

Perhaps one of my least popular positions is that a church should not be a church for "everyone." First, it's impossible. There are just too many traditions, practices, styles, and languages for any single congregation to pull that off. The very idea that any church could be a church for "everyone" is arrogant.

But second—and more importantly—if a church is meant to create safety, community, and belonging for the most vulnerable, then those who would harm the most vulnerable necessarily cannot be welcome. Of course, there are many ways to define "harm," and plenty of room to debate how sensitive that threshold should be. But we can't pretend there's a sensitivity low enough that we can have a church for "everyone."

Adam Bates explains: "You can say 'all are welcome,' but if wolves and sheep are both welcome then you're only going to get wolves. The smart sheep will go somewhere else and the naive sheep will be eaten and processed."

Centrism isn't neutrality. It's a choice to accommodate supremacy. And I wonder if we shouldn't feel the same way about churches who are proud that they are safe places for people who think LGBTQ people don't deserve to exist. Why would you be arrogant about being inclusive of bigotry?

Paul had the same question two thousand years ago.

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is furious. A man in the church "has" his father's wife—and the Greek is blunter than most English translations let on. The word isn't "living with," as the NRSVue politely renders it. It's ἔχειν—to have, to possess. The power dynamics of a stepmother-stepson relationship in the ancient world make it almost certain this was, at minimum, deeply asymmetrical. More likely, it was rape.

And Paul knows about it because of "Chloe's people" (1:11)—a report that came through a woman's network. In my reading, a woman reported sexual abuse to Paul.

What enrages Paul isn't just the act itself. It's that the Corinthian church is proud of its tolerance. "And you are arrogant!" he writes. They've mistaken permissiveness for spiritual maturity. They think their refusal to judge makes them enlightened.

Paul disagrees. Strongly.

He reaches for the metaphor of Passover. Before the feast, you clean the yeast from your house. The church gathering is a continual Passover celebration—the new exodus, the liberation of Christ — and so the community must be a place where corruption cannot quietly leaven the whole batch.

The early church took this seriously. In many congregations, there was a physical barrier between the baptized community and those still exploring the faith. Communion was fenced because what happened at the table meant something. It was participation in a new kind of life together, and that life required accountability.

Now, I personally believe in an open table. I believe nothing can separate us from the grace of Christ, not least a pastor from a communion table. But I also understand what Paul is protecting here, and it isn't doctrinal purity or sexual conservatism. It's people.

Notice who Paul says to remove: the man, not the woman. He doesn't question her, blame her, or suggest she brought it on herself. Paul's response is to shame the church for tolerating the abuser. That's remarkable. And it's remarkably unlike what many churches do today.

He draws another line in the back half of the chapter—one that contemporary Christianity has almost perfectly inverted. Judge insiders, he says. Not outsiders. "What have I to do with judging those outside?" Don't impose Christian ethics on people who haven't claimed them. But within the community? Hold each other accountable. Make the church safe.

This isn't about policing private behavior or becoming the theology police. There's plenty of room for disagreement on the color of the carpet and the key of the hymn. (Less room on the quality of the coffee, but still some wiggle room.)

The question is why human rights are the thing we've decided to tolerate differences on. Why should an ICE agent feel welcome in your church? Why do dehumanizing beliefs get treated like valid theological positions deserving of a seat at the table?

The reason, I think, that evangelicalism has been so thoroughly co-opted by white supremacy and bigotry is that we have no stomach for confronting bad beliefs before they produce bad behavior. We wait until the wolves have already eaten the sheep and then form a committee to study what went wrong. I also wonder if the anxiety that Christian progressives might become new fundamentalists will, in too many cases, lead us to make the exact same mistakes as our evangelical siblings—letting dehumanizing beliefs take root because we're too polite to pull them up.

There's one more detail from this passage worth sitting with. When Paul says to "hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh," the purpose is not damnation. It's salvation. Even the expulsion is aimed at restoration—suffering the consequences now so that "the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord." Boundaries aren't punishment. They're protection with the goal of restoration.

The table of Jesus is open. But an open table still needs someone willing to say: you don't get to use this space to hurt people.

What I'm Watching and Reading

My wife has slowly dragged me into the world of Bridgerton. And despite my best efforts, I can now say I enjoy it. Season 4 was much better than Season 3.

I also re-read Henri Nouwen's Spiritual Direction, and it kicked my butt. The need to set aside real, protected time for prayer and meditation is a theme I keep circling back to, and Nouwen doesn't let you off the hook.

Our family is still loving The Dragon Prince (underrated). And we're about to start Season 2 of The Pitt with genuine fear and trembling. That show is a good reminder for everyone: get your wills and living wills in order. Seriously.

Wild Bible Fact

There's more than one Rahab in the Bible.

Most people know Rahab the spy from the book of Joshua—the woman who hid the Israelite scouts and was spared when Jericho fell. But there's another Rahab, and she's a primordial chaos monster.

In several Old Testament passages (Job 9:13, Job 26:12, Psalm 89:10, Isaiah 51:9), Rahab is an ancient sea creature—a serpent of chaos that God defeats in order to bring creation into being. It's part of a broader ancient Near Eastern tradition in which creation happens through divine combat with the forces of chaos. The name likely means "the raging one" or "the proud one." Same name. Very different energy.

Linklove

The Venereal Game: What do you call a group of cybertrucks? How about a "recall." Let's call a collective of TSA agents a grope! Here's a running list of collective nouns—real, invented, and increasingly unhinged. The Venereal Game

An outstanding visual essay on why women's clothing sizes are insanity—and why it was never designed to work. Sizing Chaos

If you undercook this mushroom, you will hallucinate tiny people. Not metaphorical tiny people. Actual tiny people on your dishes. The Mushroom Making People Hallucinate Tiny Humans