Transformers: More than Meets The Eye!!

Once in a while I get a Christmas present or I make a purchase, and soon discover the dreaded phrase, "Some Assembly Required". The last purchase like this was my office chair. Soon Sherie Beasley, Joe Wells, and I were all working together trying to figure out how to put to the chair together. As soon as I got all the parts out of the box, I was stressed. Sherie and I sweated and laughed over the time we put the thing together, and when we could not figure out how to get the wheels on without breaking them, Joe came to the rescue. It turned out to be more fun than I expected. Especially because we did it together.
George Hunter says, "Christianity represents and at its best mediates the only power in the cosmos that changes losers into winners." Yet, I wonder, if often times in the church we believe that God changes lives. We look at others and wonder if they should have been identified as "beyond repair". Or we fancy ourselves like Harry in "My Fair Lady" and label people as "project" or a "fixer-upper". If we do that, we are playing God and judge in others lives. That labeling is not good. It keeps both the judger and the judged from being honest, authentic people.
Judging is the opposite of loving. When we function as a community of judgment instead of a community of grace, we find our lives are all about performance, our worship is about putting on a good show, and faith becomes a series of hoops to jump through instead of an experience of grace. Before long instead of being clothed with Christ, we find we are all hiding in bushes looking for fig leaves to cover our nakedness.