Am I In?

Who's in and who's out? Who's cool and who's not? We ask these questions often--sometimes in these words, sometimes more indirectly; sometimes out loud, sometimes to ourselves. At every stage of our lives past third grade, there are in crowds. It's the athletic kids in elementary school, or the ones who have hit puberty in junior high, or the popular crowd who have the parties everyone wants an invite to in high school. In college it's the ones who got into 'that' school, then it's those three or four frats or sororities, then it's the really cool or really thin or really sexy or really rich ones within those groups. Or it's a certain Christian fellowship group, and then the insiders within that crowd. After school it's the people landing the sweet jobs, or doing the 'right' kind of ministry, or getting married out of college. Truth is, in all these situations there are lots of different inner circles. And we want in, somewhere.

But sometimes these inner rings aren't merely concerned with outward appearance, ability, or achievement. Especially as we get older, we look to form these groups however we can. We look to categorize people into little boxes that we can label and dismiss with a word, and assure ourselves that ours is the right box. Oh, how easy and powerful it is to throw around classifications! 'Well, he's a Democrat, so you know...' 'She's in the drama crowd, so...' 'I went to this school...' 'They go to that church, so obviously they're...'. And we want to keep drawing that inner ring so that we can look out on 'the rest of them' with smug disapproval. We want to keep building that platform, so that we can perch atop and look down on those others who 'don't get it.' We love divisions. We love cliques. We love that feeling of being on the inside, referring to each other as 'we' and them as 'they.' We love to exclude. In fact, much of the thrill is not so much enjoying these supposed friends or whatever interest our circle concerns, but instead it's that very act of excluding others that gets us excited.

Did Jesus draw an inner circle? He had his twelve disciples, and it seems like he was really close with three of them. But what did his ministry look like? Did he go around drawing circles? Hardly. He hung out with people who didn't have an inner circle, who had been excluded by all the 'insiders' because they were ugly or poor or addicts or diseased or the wrong religion. And who did he get really mad at? The guys drawing the inner circles. The ones who wouldn't let in the losers or the kids or the drunks or the whores or the heretics. So you could say Jesus did in fact draw inner circles, but then he excluded the ones on the inside and included the ones on the outside. He said if you really want to be an insider, you can be. Have fun. The rest of these jokers are coming with me.