God’s Not On Their Team

Whose team is God on? I bet that most people will get this question wrong.

I believe that there has been a huge misconception about God and who he is for and who he is against.

Most tend to categorize the world into two groups: religious and irreligious, good people and bad people, the righteous and the sinners. They think the protagonists are the priests, pastors, and church members who go to church three times a week. The antagonists are the people at the bars, the strip clubs, the cheating bosses, the gossiping co-workers, and so on.

So, the desire of most non-Christians is to become more religious throughout their life to try to work their way closer to the religious people (you know, the people on God’s team).

But most people see the priests in the news who molest boys, the televangelists who hoard money, the judgmental aunt who makes them feel guilty about everything, the condemners who show up downtown yelling about how “God hates fags” as the ultra-religious people who are on God’s team. They look at this team, shudder, and tell themselves that if God is their God, then they want no part it!

Most people forget that the religious people are the ones who killed Jesus.

Jesus tells a parable in Luke 18 that describes the story of a religious man and a sinner. The religious man prays and boasts about how good he is. The sinner beats his chest and asks God to have mercy on him. Jesus then concludes by saying, “This man [the sinner], rather than the other, went home justified before God.”

There are not two teams – the religious and the irreligious. There are bad people and bad people as Mark Driscoll claims. There are bad people who think highly of themselves and there are bad people who think lowly of themselves - and cry out to God.

Which team is God on?

Jesus showed us which team he was on by who he hung out with while he was on earth. He visited the sinners most often. He loved to hang out with the social outcasts, the prostitutes, the people who knew they were spiritually sick. And when he ran into the religious people, it usually ended in a fight.

So, when you run into your neighbor, co-worker, or friend – share with them the good news that Jesus is not on the side of the legalists, the fundamentalists, the judgmental church-goers, or the proud and arrogant.

He’s on the side of the broken, the needy, the humble. That is God’s team.

THAT is good news.