Author Archives: elizabeth.turner

How do you express your convictions with deep respect, appreciation, and even grief? This is a question many are wrestling with currently. An acquaintance for whom I hold deep respect named this struggle quite clearly on social media recently. He addressed it with humility, genuinely hoping to find a way of communicating with both conviction and graciousness. Living with gracious conviction isn’t just something to be pursued by leaders in one denomination, either, as denominational Hospice care is called in for the UMC. How might Christians not only speak with gracious conviction but also live with gracious conviction? How might people uncertain of their faith but desperate for respectful dialogue speak and live with gracious conviction?

Embodying Service

In a time when words are thrown around a dime a dozen online – when we’re so inundated with words communicated through modern technology that emojis were developed to communicate nonverbal intent – speaking and living with gracious conviction means getting our hands dirty.

It is not only acceptable, for Christians it is biblical to be prodigal – generous and extravagant with our service toward others. Our service can never solely be toward people who affirm our religion or our theological convictions. Occasionally, no matter what theological camp one finds herself in, there is the fear that showing service, care, or love to someone with whom you disagree is somehow a token of your agreement with all their opinions. This is patently, incontrovertibly wrong. To love your neighbor as yourself, to “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2) means to promote the welfare and well-being of people who may think you’re wrong, misguided, ignorant, blinded – or laughable. No theological camp is immune. Progressive liberal activists and conservative traditionalists alike easily justify withholding a towel and basin on the basis of principle.

Embodied service doesn’t require the perpetuation of one organization – an organization attempting to hold together so many different theological threads that it is straining and ripping at the seams. Embodied service simply means showing up for people with whom we profoundly disagree, because we value their lives. Organizational pragmatism may indicate the advisability of existing as separate worshiping bodies, where demonstrably and repeatedly over decades profound disagreement emerges on who exactly we’re worshiping.

Belonging to the same organization has never been a prerequisite for serving someone, though. Belonging to the same denomination or tradition isn’t a requirement. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. For those in the Wesleyan Methodist branch of the family tree of the faith, we’re familiar with John Wesley’s thinking on the “means of grace,” which include not only works of piety, but works of mercy.

So maybe you notice someone you’ve been arguing with on social media has a sick family member: send them flowers or a restaurant gift card. Maybe you’ve lost your graciousness in an exchange with a colleague: apologize without self-justification. Shovel their sidewalk; mow their lawn. Maybe you long for someone to know that no matter how deeply you differ, you’re trying to really see them, hear them, and treat them with dignity. Donate in their honor to a non-profit they might value.

In times when words are cheap, show up with actions to demonstrate the posture of your heart. It’s interesting that actions shape attitudes as well. Getting down on your knees to pick up the coins accidentally dropped by someone who thinks you’re deeply wrong? You and they both need to feel your willingness to do it, whether or not they ever express gratitude or reciprocation.

The image we have to guide us is Jesus at the Last Supper – Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. These feet included the feet of Judas, who would walk out of the room with feet cleaned by God and would walk to betray God whose hands were wet with dirty water. Jesus knew and knelt anyway. We can’t do less.

Verbalizing Gratitude

Living with gracious conviction can also be expressed by finding something for which you can say thank you. Find something, however small, that you appreciate, and say it. To live and speak with gracious conviction is to step aside from intense irritation, anger, hurt, or frustration long enough to find anything you can say “thank you” to.

This doesn’t come from an odd need to debase yourself. It doesn’t come from a place of neediness for affirmation. Rather, verbalizing gratitude simply reinforces the essential humanity of another person. It reminds both you and them of your acknowledgment that they have something to contribute to the world. If we are quick to write off people due to their opinions, are we making it easier to write off their innate value? Jesus was willing to meet at night in private with Nicodemus, a man who belonged to a group publicly opposed to Jesus during the day.

Obviously, very, very few people in human history have been completely, thoroughly given over to all-consuming evil. If most people are a complex mixture of motives, wounds, gifts, personal histories, self-sabotaging habits, prevenient grace, corrosive self-centeredness, and will – yet all the while made in the image of God, however fractured – then thanking them is a simple, genuine way to communicate gratitude for their existence. It also leaves the door open, because you never know when someone may change their mind, and giving them a path and doorway to do so is vital. Finding something for which you can thank a person will acknowledge that they may have some kind of insight you do not (even if it’s a coffee recommendation) and that you are in the position to receive that insight. It takes discipline to think and communicate in ways that constantly remind us, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, of the glory other beings are capable of bearing.

There is always something you can thank someone for. There is always something you can appreciate. It may have to be only, “I like your shirt.” It may have to be, “thank you for engaging in a difficult conversation,” or “I appreciate the time you took to respond,” or “thank you for sharing your perspective; it’s a privilege to hear your story, I don’t take it lightly.”

If there’s genuine opportunity, you can even verbalize something you’ve learned from them, gained from them, or notice about them. “You are really passionate about what you believe, and I respect that,” or “I know we’re operating from different convictions, but I’ve noticed you’re really gifted at ________, and I hope you have ways of utilizing those talents,” or, “a while back you mentioned ___________ and while I know we have different perspectives on other topics, I want you to know how much I appreciated it when you said __________.”

One time Jesus healed ten men isolated and marginalized by disease; they were so eager to go get medical clearance and find their loved ones that they ran off. Only one came back to thank Jesus – and the one that returned to thank Jesus was a Samaritan – a “foreigner” whose social marginalization wouldn’t end with the healing of a disease. Sometimes we forget how rarely people hear the words “thank you.” Can you think of a time someone thanked you and it made a world of difference?

For Christians, one of the distinctive practices of our faith is sharing Communion – the Eucharist – the “Great Thanksgiving.” To receive Communion is to remember we are recipients of grace. To thank others is to remember we are all recipients of grace, none more worthy than another.

Responding to the Real Thing and the Real Person

Living and speaking with gracious conviction means giving others the gift of seeking to understand their position as they would describe it. You don’t have to agree with it or their conclusions or actions; but you can’t reject a caricature of their position and then pronounce your rejection of the caricature.

Christians are called to seek Truth. In this sense, we are committed to responding to the real. This means we work to seek out and find the real. So while we may hold differing beliefs, convictions, or theological perspectives, a commitment to the Truth means a commitment to discovering what someone actually believes. You’re not repeating someone’s opinion of what someone else believes. You’re not reporting on hearsay of what a group believes. You’re actually researching for yourself to the best of your ability. It is work.

The difficulty of course is that humans are so good at saying one thing and doing another, and that humans are so good at seeing themselves in optimal light and others with skepticism. No one is perfectly self-aware, and whole groups of people may profess one value but fail to embody it consistently.

However, we’re speaking here of explicitly stated declarations of belief, and not just the ability to live those beliefs consistently. We may insist that a Christian denomination ought to have some meaningful measure of shared theology about who Jesus is without making a caricature of one individual hateful progressive activist intolerant of those with whom they disagree. We may insist that a Christian denomination ought to value and act on initiatives to dismantle systemic racism, poverty, and injustice, without making a caricature of one individual hateful traditionalist conservative intolerant of those with whom they disagree.

To live with gracious conviction is to be ruthlessly committed to the Truth, which requires us to represent others’ convictions as fairly as possible – so that they would be able to recognize the description as an accurate representation of themselves. In this sense, it’s simple honesty. We are trying to be truthful and fair in our representation of others (even though it’s not nearly as satisfying as sharing a meme mocking them; unless it’s a meme mocking the Patriots, we can all agree those are universally acceptable, right?).

By responding to the real beliefs and professed values rather than mischaracterizations, we extend dignity to those with whom we differ. And to thoughtlessly, carelessly mischaracterize an opponent is to lie and steal – you are lying about their beliefs or motives and you are stealing their reputation. What may have been a profound but respectful disagreement becomes a hurtful, toxic stew of mischief that feeds off the half-formed perspectives of those new to the conflict and bewildered by the exaggerated portraits they’re presented. When we research and read and listen and track down primary sources and ignore clickbait commentary, it’s easier to respond both to beliefs and to the people who hold them.

Recently a friend commented, “it’s easy to hate something you get to define.” He meant that it’s easy to decide something is A, and since you hate A, you hate the something. The question is whether something is A or whether you quickly decided it is – and then dismissed it. To live with gracious conviction is to be willing to learn what something is before you decide to define it and reject it.

Laughing at Yourself

Some of the people in my life who most closely embodied the word “saint” are people who never took themselves too seriously even when other people took them very seriously indeed. There was a childlikeness to them, independent of age. By all means, take Christ seriously – though Chesterton reminded us all of how surprised we’ll be by God’s mirth – but in your earnestness, be able to laugh at yourself easily. Your silly, inconsistent, hobbit-like self.

I can make a cheap shot at the Patriots that will garner a strong response of approval or howls of indignation – but the truth is, I rarely watch American NFL football, my loyalty to the Colts is casually based on growing up in Indiana, and I have no idea whether other teams cheat as well and the Patriots just got caught at it. I can smile while looking at my silly bias, when I haven’t watched football in over a year and the last time I really cared about the Colts was before Manning headed West.

We’ve got to be able to laugh at ourselves.

In a culture in which we all take ourselves quite seriously, perhaps one sign of holiness is holding our own dignity and reputation lightly while seeking to deal fairly with others’. Burnt out pastors and leaders in particular struggle to be able to laugh at themselves; a sign you’re on the path to rest and restoration is when you can have fun again without worrying what’s being neglected while you do. Living with gracious conviction doesn’t mean the responsibility is all on your shoulders. It’s not irresponsible to a cause to stop and smile; it’s essential.

If you believe that in his full God-ness Jesus was also full human, then remember: we have a Savior who laughed until he cried. Probably at James and John, who seem likely to have been the Fred and George Weasley of the disciples.

Show up and serve (your enemies), say thank you (to your opponents), respond to the real thing (not the caricature), laugh at yourself (instead of others). These habits will help form a posture of communicating – of living – with gracious conviction. Most of them rely on humility in action; they show and shape perspective at the same time. They are habits learned as we follow Jesus around as his apprentices. They don’t always come easily; as we learn, we still fall short. But this is the Jesus way. We can’t do less – and by God’s grace, it will become easier.

What comes to mind when you think of the word “sanctification”?

If you’re online trying to find a local mechanic to align your tires and somehow ended here, let’s back up.

Lots of people are atheists or agnostics or follow any number of religions. Christians are theists – we believe in God. In particular, whether we’re Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, or another tradition, Christians believe that God in God’s nature is Trinity: three persons, one God. Historic language for this is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, not because two/thirds of God is male, but because to approach God is to discover the tightly knit interconnectedness of how three persons relate in one unity. I promise this connects to the question, “what is the Wesleyan theology of sanctification?” Also, your tires might need rotated or balanced, too.

Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Coptic and other Christians also believe in the Incarnation: the second person of the Trinity, like the Gospel of John tells us, became flesh. The Word became flesh, and dwelled among us, or as Eugene Peterson poetically painted, the Word “moved into the neighborhood.”

Why the “Word became flesh” through the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ is where you begin to find some different emphases among Christian traditions. For centuries, some Eastern Orthodox believers have been universalists, believing eventually everyone will have full union with God in the afterlife. Western Christianity (St. Augustine from Africa, the eventual Roman Catholic Church, and many Protestants) has always placed focus on humanity’s tendency to self-destruct. Curved inward with disordered love of self over God and neighbor, humans have repeatedly chosen to reject God’s love in favor of self-will. (Sometimes this is referred to as “original sin” or as “sin” in general.) Humans continually fall short of the profound goodness and love of God; Jesus moved into the neighborhood, so to speak, to redeem the situation, to show us what God looks like with skin on, and to bring new life and hope to people in need of both. The Word became flesh to bridge the gap between the Creator and the creation.

Yes, you say, having finally found the right tire place on Google maps, but what of the Holy Spirit? What about “Wesleyan” and what do you mean by sanctification? These are great questions to ask in or out of a mechanic’s shop, and the longer you wait while your car is being worked on, the more you’ll need the Holy Spirit and sanctification. Or, put another away, the longer you wait, the more opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work sanctification of your soul after you’ve flipped through an old People and watched the clock practically go backwards.

The Holy Spirit pours out the power of God in a variety of ways that always reveal Christ, point to Christ, and empower believers with the love and power of Christ. Christians may point to the Holy Spirit inspiring the formation of scriptural texts or the Holy Spirit being active in varying practices of ordination (the setting aside of specially called, trained, anointed ministers). Some believers affirm the Holy Spirit’s activity in the Eucharist or Mystery or Holy Communion, transforming simple bread and wine or juice literally (if you’re Catholic) or mystically into a grace-filled experience of the body of Christ. Within these various traditions also lies a very real, often impostered, frequently misunderstood reality. The Holy Spirit continues today to surprise us in tire stores or churches or huts around the world with supernatural phenomena inexplicable solely through reductionist materialist scientific inquiry – healing, signs, strange things we can’t comprehend but that always, only reveal Christ and point to Christ and the invisible reality that is as real as a chipped coffee mug next to a stale-smelling Keurig machine. To greater and lesser degrees, and through a variety of means, believers also affirm that the Holy Spirit works to transform our outer behavior and our inner lives and loves so that we aren’t stuck in the same self-destruct patterns forever.

And this is where we intersect the original question: what is a Wesleyan theology of sanctification? Sorry, we’re out of time, we’ll have to look at that later.

Kidding! Kind of. There’s a lot to say and we’ve already condensed 2,000 years of church history and Trinitarian theology in ways that will have pastors, priests, and especially academics clearing their throats and raising their eyebrows and wanting to clarify or redefine everything I just said.

Wesleyan Methodists, or Wesleyans, or Methodists, are a group of Protestant Christians with a particular set of theological emphases from English brothers John and Charles Wesley, who lived in the 1700’s. “Wesleyan” derives from their name, obviously, and “Methodist” began as an insult because of their persnickety adherence to, yes, methods. While I say Wesleyan Methodism sprang up because of two brothers, if you read a basic biography you’ll soon see we wouldn’t have it today without their remarkable mom, Susanna.

Though John and Charles started what would become this movement, the seeds of Methodism grew while they were at Oxford University. Though they had sisters, women weren’t allowed admission at Oxford at the time, so while the mechanic comes over to tell you that instead of alignment, you need four new tires, you can sit and muse about how the movement might have looked had the Wesley sisters been allowed to attend Oxford.

The Wesley kids primarily were raised by their mom, but their father was a clergyman in the Church of England, which matters but we won’t get into why right now. The main point is that the Church of England at the time was nothing to write home about; and the brothers’ zeal for spiritual growth and formation was in stark contrast to the snoozing pulpits of polite civic religion of their day. Thus they were given the snarky brand of being overexcited “Methodists.”

The notion of sanctification doesn’t belong to one Christian tradition; it doesn’t belong solely to Wesleyan Methodists. You can find it in different terminology scattered across church history, through various traditions, and around the globe. But the Wesleyan Methodists were really organized about focusing on it, pursuing it, and living it individually and in community. The impact on real daily lives was astonishing. Child labor was confronted, illiteracy tackled. John Wesley’s most popular writing during his lifetime wasn’t his pile of sermons, it was his little practical, common-sense pamphlet on health, 250 years before Web MD. There were many very tangible outcomes to something that could sound abstract or removed from real life – sanctification and holiness. But for the Wesleys, sanctification was never about traveling to a remote cave to get away from the mundane or insidious. It was about real life, today, given all the less than ideal circumstances that come our way.

“Sanctus” means holy; sanctification simply refers to being made holy. We struggle though with how to define holy: you might say sacred or set apart or pristine or consecrated. Christians call God “holy,” but what do we really mean by that? Pure? Transcendent? Other-than? Monty Python delightfully skewered the weight and the difficulty of applying the word in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in a comedic scene about divine commands on how to use the “holy hand grenade.” Obviously, you can agree to call any object holy or sacred but that doesn’t make it so even if you treat it like it is. You may ask your mechanic if she’s using the ancient holy wrench on your car to be charged this much for new tires, and she may say, “yes, this here is my holy wrench,” waving it around while both of you know there’s nothing holy about this grimy dented wrench or her impulse to whack you with it or your impulse to be rude and impatient.

Holiness must be derived from something holy in and of itself. Where God breaks in, there is holiness. We don’t strain and strive to become our version of holy – John Wesley tried that, it didn’t go well. Painting a hammer gold and calling it holy doesn’t make it holy.

But as we follow Jesus, we open space to pursue and receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit, to be transformed so that, while you are still fully you, you are also more like Jesus in your thinking, will, desires, and choices.

Different traditions within Christianity describe a couple of odd phrases: imputed and imparted righteousness. To impute righteousness is to ascribe or assign righteousness to something that doesn’t have it inherently (rather like the “holy hand grenade”). It’s a position you occupy whether or not you bear the reality within yourself. Say a country with a monarchy has a revolution and they want to install a new king or queen. With a great deal of ceremony and ritual, they name someone as monarch who may have no royal family heritage. (That’s how monarchies began. “He is king now.” “But five seconds ago – ” “HE IS KING NOW.” “Long live the king!”) Everyone agrees to that position while knowing that one person’s DNA is not inherently set apart as “royal.” You are assigning a reality onto something.

To impart righteousness is to give righteousness; imparted righteousness is given and received in a meaningful way so that you are not just assigning a position or title or state of being. Righteousness is actually grown into; it is lived out. Say a kid starts taking vocal lessons and is fairly mediocre. But as they internalize their training and mimic the habits and disciplines of their teacher, their skills genuinely change and improve. Someone who begins as a novice singer transforms into a skilled vocalist. In that scenario, a teacher is imparting skill, passion, discipline, advice, correction, and affirmation.

Imagine then if the teacher could reach into their own throat and share a portion of the clarity of their tone, their perfect pitch, their love of music, and infuse their student with those qualities. That is imparted righteousness. It’s a transcendent music teacher not only demonstrating but sharing their own qualities with the student, as the student also exercises their will to show up for lessons, practice at home, and hone a love of singing.

And that – in part, please don’t email nasty remarks about how I’ve butchered a beautiful tradition – is what a Wesleyan theology of sanctification is: it is the belief, practice, discipline, and lifestyle of showing up to voice lessons with a desire to sing like our Divine Virtuoso, and our Cosmic Music Teacher sharing a portion of their own tone, pitch, technique, power, and passion back with us, so that whether or not we occasionally croak, crack, or drop a word, our intent is complete harmony with the Master Vocalist: the aim of perfect love.

More can be said about the nuts and bolts of this pursuit: the value of practicing this together in Wesley’s discipleship bands; the tangible way this works out in pursuit of justice where there is discordant exploitation, poverty, and abuse; the means of grace as a kind of practicing the scales and showing up for lessons; Scripture as a pitch pipe that reveals and tunes.

Your tires are finally ready, by the way. And where ugly attitudes or impatience or self-centeredness threaten to lead you off-key, leaning into the voice of Jesus Christ happens when, with humility, you can see your tired mechanic, make eye contact, smile, love her, and ask her how you can pray for her today. That is the Jesus way; that is what we mean by holy.