Who is the Jesus of our faith and churches?  Is he a white-robed, well-trimmed, civilized politician who invites his followers to live aloof in ivory towers?  Or is he a sunburnt and scraggly everyman who walks in the room with a hearty laugh and props up his feet on the table, his dirty toenails unashamed in plain view for all to see?

I am concerned that churches and the Christians who fill them have largely lost the impropriety that characterizes our faith.  I am not saying that we should not be well dressed and well mannered.  But I question if our short and sweet but shallow and over planned worship services, our beautiful sanitized buildings, and our polished Facebook pages belie the true character of the one we say that we follow.

The pages of Scripture reveal a God who does not care about his reputation, a Jesus who has no need for the writings of Emily Post, a Spirit who will literally shake the walls of our meeting places.  The central issue of the Bible is the advent of the Kingdom of God, one that demolishes all evil and restores we humans to our relationship with God, and does not mind making mess in the process.

Proverbs 14:4 says “Where no oxen are, the manger is clean, but much increase comes by the strength of the ox.”  In other words, if you want something awesome to happen, it necessitates a mess.  A clean stable is a sign of no animals; in contrast, the smell of poop means that something is amiss.

This is an analogy to our faith.  Properness and polish are an enemy of true faith because true faith is messy and risky.  The misconception that maturity equals success and togetherness has castrated much of the church.  The reality we see in Scripture over and over is that the deeper we go in God, the messier it gets.

David danced before everyone not in his royal robes, but in an undergarment.  Ezekiel baked barley bread right in front of his onlookers, using human dung as fuel.  Jesus spit in a man’s eyes and then rubbed mud in them.  After being filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples appeared drunk to onlookers.

We must ditch this respectability and the shallowness and legalism that accompany it.  Mr. John Bunyan tackles this issue in The Pilgrim’s Progress, pointing out the error of a nefarious villain of the faith:

“The man Civility, notwithstanding his simpering looks, he is but a hypocrite, and cannot help thee. There is nothing in all this noise that thou hast heard of this sottish man, but at design to beguile thee of thy salvation.”

Propriety not only affects the quality of our faith, but it may disqualify us from the faith, as such faith originates not from the need for the mercy of God in Jesus, but rather from our own ability to be good and proper enough to please God.  This is a scandal.

What to do?  Deny such polish, instead embracing a desperate faith that has not ‘grown up’ but rather still searches for the mystery of God.   The late Rich Mullins leaves us with perhaps a scarily accurate description of God Almighty:

“If He was cultured, if He was as civilized as most Christian people wish He was, He would be useless to Christianity. But God is a Wild Man, and I hope that the course of your life you encounter Him. But let me warn you, you need to hang on for dear life, or let go for dear life, maybe is better.”