The Church of the Open Door

They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

The words to the old song ring in my ears as I look at the white clapboard church, doors tightly shut against me.  My friends had warned me that this would happen—“They won’t understand.  They won’t try to understand.  They’ll just judge.”  I didn’t believe them.  How could it be? 

And yet, here it was.  I had come in seeking shelter, and I was summarily cast out.  Churches today expect a full record of your life if they don’t know you.  They want everything—birth records, marriage documents, reports of any known lifestyle defects and evidence that those defects have been taken care of.  “The church is not your nanny,” they are fond of saying.  This is a place for the Righteous to come and be safe, protected from the hideousness that exists outside.  I didn’t make it past the first step—the documents check.  Though I tried to explain that what happened wasn’t my fault, I was silenced and sent back outside.  Evidently I was one of the hideous mob and not welcome.

It wasn’t always like this, I’m told.  There are records of churches being welcoming sanctuaries where you could come and be safe.  In those days, churchgoers considered themselves sinners as well, and they welcomed one and all to come and worship.  I long for those days.  But that was before lifestyle changes led to disruption, science led to new visions of what man was capable of becoming, and morality gave way to “to each his own”.  The major churches banded together in defense of the unknown, and a new religion was born.  The view was that all redeemable men had been redeemed.  They felt that anyone who was not a member, anyone who was not in the fold, was incapable of redemption.  The operation of the church changed from one of welcoming redemption to one of guarded safety—we are inside, you are out.  You are not allowed in.

Most of the “unredeemed” didn’t care.  They had little use for religion, and there were plenty of other faiths out there anyway.  But for people like me, people who had found a Bible, read it, believed it, and wanted to be part of the Truth, seeing those temples in town was torture.  We thought that the truth was out there somewhere, and we wanted to find others who believed as we do.  As followers of Christ, we wanted to be accepted by our fellow Christians.

Why was I not accepted?  I am a clone.  I was created from cells of my older brother as a replacement for him.  Even after all these years, it still hurts to remember the disappointment in my parents’ faces when they realized that cells do not a replacement make.  He was athletic; I am a poet.  He was into cars; I am into books.  He was slim and ripped; I am heavy and…not.  After raising me to adulthood, my parents lost interest in me and turned me loose.  I had other brothers, after all, other clones who were more true to the son that they had lost.  I could easily be replaced.  So at sixteen, I was on my own.

I loved books, as I said.  I am a poet.  I found a Bible in the literature section of the library, and as I began to read, I first was attracted to Psalms.  I didn’t understand a lot of the language, but I loved the idea of a man who could come to his Father with anything—love, hate, despair—and know that he would be heard.  More than that, he would not be abandoned because of what he could or could not do.  So I read further.  So many varieties of literature!  At first, that was all I saw.  I don’t even remember when it began to dawn on me that maybe, just possibly, this could be a work of nonfiction.  The Old Testament spoke of wars, uprisings, races taking over other races, women and men born into infidelity and coming into a faith on their own, being led by this Jehovah…this God who seemed to love them in spite of their unworthiness.  The New Testament was devoted to the works and life of the Man from Galilee.  He was kind to all, Jews and Samaritans alike.  I was impressed by his actions, although it took a while for it to sink in.  The man in the second testament was sent by the God in the first testament—and he was God’s son.  In fact, if I understood the book correctly, he was God himself!  I wasn’t sure how that could be—that was one reason I wanted, no-- needed to get into one of those churches.  I had to understand!  But I was an outcast.

One day, I was reading the book of Genesis once again, when something struck me.  I reread the passage.  Why hadn’t I noticed it before?  God created Eve from Adam’s rib!  She wasn’t born; she was a clone!  She was created from Adam’s own body, just as I was created from my brother’s own cells!  And wasn’t Eve the mother of us all? In that way, couldn’t you say that we are all descended from clones?

I began to read the Bible again, in earnest.  I didn’t see another example of this, but I did see God himself go away from his own design from time to time.  He created warriors from skeletons.  He intervened personally into history.  He declared murder contrary to his own laws, yet he called a murderer—a man who killed his mistress’s husband—a man after his own heart!  It seemed that life following this God was anything but safe! 

As I continued to read and pray (I wasn’t sure what prayer was, but I read the prayer that was suggested by this Jesus and prayed it.  I also read the way he talked to his father, his God, and I also started doing that), the idea began to dawn on me:  why don’t I start a church of my own?  If I followed this Christ on the outside, maybe there were others who did as well!

So I found a building in good repair, made sure that there were no other tenants, and converted it to a small church.  I called it “The Church of the Open Door”, and I made sure that the door was indeed open.  It was open to all—clones, recipients of surgeries that the other Churches had declared ungodly, people who had fallen into sin and wanted to climb back out, even those who said that they weren’t interested in changing their ways, they were just interested in what this Bible of mine had to say.  Some of them came a few times, laughed at us, and left.  Others, though, kept coming back, month after month.  At first I spoke every month, but soon others asked to share the privilege.  We didn’t know much, but we all were studying the Book, and we all found something new to say.  It was a wonderful time.

One day, the strangest thing happened.  A man came who seemed different from us.  For one thing, he was much better dressed.  This was obviously a man of society, unlike the rest of us on the outside.  He was from one of the closed churches, but he said that news had come to them of our meeting.  The others had ridiculed us, but something about our meeting kept nagging at him.  He had also been reading the Bible—he’d been doing his own reading, not the suggested verses that the Church said were appropriate for these latter days, but all the Bible, and he thought that our way was closer to the heart of God than his way.  He humbly asked if he could be a part of our communion.

I was surprised, and I was pleased.  However, some of my fellow churchmen weren’t in the same frame of mind as I was.  They wanted to keep him out.  He was a member of the churches that refused us entry, so why shouldn’t we refuse him?  But they left it up to me.  I prayed and sought God earnestly, and heard only, “All are welcome here.”  So this man, too, found welcome.

Today, our building is bursting at the seams.  There is a growing desire to know this Jesus, and people come from all over.  Other buildings are popping up as well.  We don’t call ourselves churches (that’s forbidden by law, anyway).  We call ourselves communities of believers.  All are welcome.  All.  No matter the problem, no matter your race, no matter your background, surgery, marital state or creed, you are welcome here.  We’ve decided that we don’t need to prohibit anyone—the Word itself draws those who it draws and repels all others.  We understand this, and we are content.