Emerging Church. Missional Community. Post-Evangelicals. Whatever we're calling ourselves nowadays...

"...so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves."

We got the second part. Are we losing sight of the first?

That darn Jesus of Nazareth. He always seems to have these grandiose, impossible to live up to, both/and expectations of us. Wise as serpents and innocent as doves? I mean, c'mon! I know plenty of people who are wise as serpents. So do you. Plenty more (well, maybe not "plenty") who are innocent as doves.

But both?!

That's tough. Which is why people, groups, communities tend to fall into one or the other end of the serpent/dove polarity. It's too hard.

So which end have we Missionals fallen into?

OK, stop scouring for the one or two exceptions.

We're a bunch of friggin' doves.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Or maybe...

Doves are pretty. But serpents make you stop and take notice. Stopping to take notice of something pretty...hey, that Jesus guy might've been on to something.

"Oh, everybody and everything is God's creation, so it's all good." "Tolerance and understanding toward all."

Cut it out already!

It ain't all good! "I send you out as sheep amidst the wolves." Wolves! Yes, they're out there. You gotta be able to sniff 'em out (or do that thing with your tongue, anyway). You can't read the Jesus story and come away with the notion that it's all peace and love out there. You just can't.

Yeah, once you sniff out the wolves, Jesus calls us destroy them with love. Granted. And that ain't no cake walk, either.

But you gotta destroy them!

Back to that Jesus guy. He didn't live all lovey-dovey amidst the evil of the world. He confronted it. He took it on, with a power that it didn't even recognize. But He took it on. And to take it on, He needed to be wise as a serpent (or God the Father, as the case may be).

Now don't go trying to turn your natural, dovey self into a serpent. You'll just end up hurting yourself. Face it, you probably wouldn't be all emerging and everything if you weren't hopelessly dove-like to begin with.

You gotta be wise about this.

I'm blessed to have a person in my life that's as wise as a serpent. Whenever I start to wax all dove-ish, this person slaps me across my high-and-mighty face with a fairly strong dose of serpentine wisdom....thus forcing us where we wouldn't, as individuals, naturally go, a third way, both/and mentality; and every time we go there, we get a strong sense of "Yeah, that's how Jesus would look at the issue."

We help each other, as a unit, become wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Are you hanging around with a bunch of doves?

Bring a serpent in the mix. And learn from one another.

Grace and Peace,
Raffi