There is a part of me that has never fully become a grown-up.  I still love the magic of children’s stories.  This is possibly because they are so uncomplicated by the problems of the adult world.  Sometimes, we need to read what’s in the pages of our favorite books and see it in a new way.

Last year, I introduced my kids to C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.  The third book (in the original published order), <em>The Voyage of the </em>Dawn Treader, quickly became my son’s favorite.  I have to admit, he has a point.  It’s full of fun, humor, and rollicking adventures on the high seas.  It also contains some of the most beautifully captured moral principles, cleverly hidden in the fairy tale setting.

My apologies if you haven’t read the book (the movie does <em>not</em> count), I am about to give spoilers.  There is a scene at the end of the book in which three travelers have fallen asleep at a table laden with good food.  They had been arguing, and one of them picked up a sacred knife and made to injure or kill the others.  They were thrown into an enchanted slumber, to be awakened only at the completion of a task undertaken by the people on board the <em>Dawn Treader</em>.

Are we not often so much like these travelers?  Over the last month, I have seen too many people approaching the holy table of faith with little or no grace.

I think we can all agree that a pastor who suggests rounding LGBT people up like cattle and surrounding them with an electric fence doesn’t represent God’s love.  But even people with a “softer” approach are unwilling to dine with those they perceive to be “sinners and tax collectors.”  There’s no room to listen to each other’s stories.

Some of the real things I’ve heard people say about others in recent weeks, both online and in real life:
<ul>
	<li>Atheists can’t be moral people, only Christians understand real morality.</li>
	<li>Gay people can’t be Christians, they are failing to uphold God’s Word on one of the most important issues.</li>
	<li>If you don’t believe in a literal six day creation, you might as well throw out the rest of the Bible, too.</li>
	<li>Women are not equal to men; the Bible says so.</li>
	<li>You are sinning by questioning the authority of the church.</li>
	<li>I’m a Christian, but the Church is a colossal failure when it comes to loving others.</li>
	<li>If you don’t support gay rights, you’re not a real Christian, just a jerk in a Jesus suit.</li>
	<li>Only people too stupid to study real science reject evolution.</li>
	<li>Married couples who choose to take on “traditional” roles are supporting misogyny.</li>
	<li>If you don’t question everything, you’ll just blindly follow the first charismatic preacher you hear.</li>
</ul>
Most of it is based on misinformation and fear.  Quite a lot of it is based on refusing to see through someone else’s eyes.

See, we’re never going to have consensus—not even within individual churches.  And “agree to disagree” (read: you shut up and I’ll shut up) is a recipe for building resentment.  Instead, we are badly in need of a new way to talk.  It’s all well and good to have safe space online to process things through, where we can write and respond.  But we need to do this in real time, face-to-face.  It’s time to stop hiding from the issues that plague the Church.

We must approach the table without knife in hand.  We must be ready to feel uncomfortable, to have our questions unanswered, to hear things we would rather not hear.  We need to leave our own agendas at the door and trust that everyone else has done the same.  If we take our Christian faith seriously, then we understand that Jesus has already undertaken the quest to awaken us.  It’s up to us what we do with that.

Are we ready to live this out offline?