Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others

by Barbara Brown Taylor

our mainline Christian lives are not particularly compelling these days. There is nothing about us that makes people want to know where we are getting our water. Our rose has lost its fragrance. The students in my class may be failing Christianity, but Christianity is failing them too. If the Spirit is doing a new thing, I wish it would hurry up. Or maybe this is the new thing—a smaller, more humble version of church with less property and fewer clergy pensions; an odd collection of people meeting here and there as they try to figure out what it means to follow Jesus in a world of many faiths; a body with his name on it that is more willing than ever to let him decide who is with him and who is not. This may be too much to ask. I like a soaring cathedral with a high pulpit and a huge pipe organ as much as the next person, but maybe it is time to swap that out for something that calls a little less attention to itself, something that frees up a little more energy for the neighbor. When everything else is gone, there is still that: the twinned love of God and neighbor, come to vivid life in the person of Jesus. Am I really meant to choose between him and my neighbors of other faiths?