Sometimes reality isn’t reality, it’s just volume.

“Sometimes reality isn’t reality, it’s just volume.” That’s how John Pavlovitz’s blog, “We are the Christian Left” begins, and most progressive and evolving Christians would agree that “The loudest people get to write the story that everyone hears, the one they come to believe is the only story.” 

Pavlovitz writes:

But that is not our story.
There is another story.
There is a different kind of Christian here.
We are such people.

We are the Christian Left.

We are Christians who have no tolerance for prejudice that denies the inherent worth of a human being based on their identity or gender or pigmentation or orientation or land of origin or faith tradition—especially when it commandeers the name of Jesus to do it. Dehumanizing language would be a foreign tongue to him, threat of violence toward others unthinkable, coordinated bullying an abomination…

You may not realize such Christians still exist anymore, in fact on many days we begin to feel as though we are a terribly endangered species too, that perhaps we are alone in this season—but that is merely the volume of the other story-writers fooling us.

Make no mistake though, we number in the millions and we are as grieved as you are by those using God to do damage to the poor and the vulnerable—and we are committed to pushing back against it.

So yes, there is certainly a loud and quite terrible story being written by people professing faith in Jesus right now; one that seems preoccupied with making the table smaller, with pushing difference to the periphery, with dispensing damnation, and with marginalizing those already at disadvantage.

There is a Christian voice of supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, nationalism, and bigotry that has the megaphone and the platform right now.

This is not the voice we want speaking for us.

We are Christians of compassion and hospitality and diversity, fully committed to making a nation that can be sanctuary and refuge for everyone who desires it, a nation where compliance with one faith tradition is not a mandatory requirement for admission, one whose burden is to build bigger tables and not higher walls.

Read the entire article on his Stuff that needs to be said website

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John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. In the past two years his blog, Stuff That Needs To Be Said, has reached a diverse audience of millions of people throughout the world, with an average monthly readership of over a million people. His home church, North Raleigh Community Church, is a growing, nontraditional Christian community dedicated to radical hospitality, mutual respect, and diversity of doctrine. John is a regular contributor to Huffington Post, Relevant Magazine, Scary Mommy, ChurchLeaders.com, and The Good Men Project.

John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. In 2017 he released his first book, A Bigger Table.  Hope and Other Superpowers, arrived in November 2018.