The story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10 shows us that there was, in fact, a time when simple conversations, steeped in humility, couched in the context of acceptance, could persuade. Do we even know how to have conversations like that anymore? Can we stop talking past others, talking at others, talking down to others long enough to actually talk with them?

The power of a simple conversation, the give-and-take exchange of ideas without name-calling or manipulation is a marvelous thing. It’s how the Early Church spread. It’s how the message of Jesus would spread today, too, if we’d give it a chance.

Peter began by showing respect, even though Cornelius and his people were of the wrong religion and ethnic origin. And instead of showing them how much they had to learn from him, Peter told them what God was teaching him through his own experience with them.

People don’t need us to give them information. (They can get whatever information they need off the internet.) But they need models of what that information looks like when it is applied.

They need safe people who will walk with them on their journey. They do not need someone to come alongside and say, “Let me teach you everything you’re doing wrong.” They need someone to come alongside and say, “I’m learning this too. Let’s learn together.”

And, while I’m here, let me say this: We need to watch our language around people who are not Christians. One of the more common terms used these days to label non-Christians by Christians (I’ve used this myself) is “lost people.” The term comes from Jesus’ stories about the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son in Luke 15.

Unfortunately, the term, which in the story means loved, precious and sought after, can become a synonym for “impure” or “unclean.” Sometimes calling someone lost sounds judgmental – especially if you compare it to calling them “missed” or “treasured,” which might be better terms to describe the sheep, coin and son in the stories.

Peter didn’t speak to Cornelius and friends from a position of superiority or power. Instead, he came to them somewhat off-balance, uncertain of exactly what God was doing. Peter said, in essence, “Look, I’m way out of my comfort zone just by being here. I’m taking a risk just sitting down to eat with you. Being here violates my long-held religious standards, but God is leading me to do this. I’m learning how to follow God right along with you.”

And then, before he proclaimed anything to them, he asked a question: “May I ask why you sent for me?” (v. 29b). Then he listened about Cornelius’ vision, and he still didn’t teach. He repeated that he himself was learning through this experience. “Then Peter began to speak: ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts those from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (vv. 34-35).

And then, finally, he began to teach, but even so, he didn’t emphasize their ignorance but how much they already knew. “You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of people through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached – how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.”

You already know all of this, he said. And then he got to the core of his message. He said, “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen – by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. All the prophets testify about him, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (vv. 39-43).

And Peter could get no further. That was all Cornelius and the other people needed to hear. They believed and God’s Spirit filled them. Peter baptized them, the first Gentiles to be marked as true believers.

Note this: When Peter approaches Cornelius, he does not ask, “Excuse me. Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions for a survey?” Nor does he ask, “If you were to die tonight, do you know for certain whether you’d go to heaven or hell?”

He didn’t ask him if he considered himself a good person. He didn’t accost him on a beach boardwalk and ask him to recite a few of the 10 Commandments. He didn’t sketch a diagram in the dirt or show him a filmstrip. He didn’t do any of the things most of us were taught to do in the personal evangelism classes churches used to offer.

Here’s what he did: “Talking with him, Peter went inside” (Acts 10:27).

You know what I think the most important word in that sentence is? “With”. Peter didn’t talk at Cornelius; he talked with him.

Also, notice the very first word. It’s not “preaching”; it’s “talking”. There’s a conversation going on here. Both parties are involved in the give and take of ideas. This isn’t a monologue or a sermon or even a lesson. Peter does not have a script. Real conversations are never scripted.

Peter made no pretense of being in a superior position. There was one person in the superior position here; that person was Jesus. Peter knew that both he and Cornelius were on equal footing because, as your pastor may have told you on multiple occasions, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

Peter had made some terrible choices. He remembered them, but he  didn’t let his feelings of unworthiness stop him from following God’s lead. We too have made some terrible choices. It’s when we forget we have that we end up acting like fools. Peter never forgot his mistakes, never forgot what he’d done that Jesus had forgiven. That’s probably how he was able to take such an inclusive stance here.

And why did Peter take such a radical approach? He tells us in the very next verse: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.”

Fascinating, isn’t it? Peter refused to call Cornelius unclean or impure. Christians today can’t seem to help themselves. We’ll call other Christians impure and unclean. You don’t want to know what we’ll call people who don’t go to church and don’t believe what we believe. It’s downright shameful.

The truth is, everyone is impure and unclean – Jew and Gentile, Christian and non-Christian. But no one is so impure or unclean that they get automatically disqualified. Not atheists. Not abortionists. Not Jon Stewart. Not Glenn Beck. Not Jerry Sandusky. Not President Barack Obama. Not Newt Gingrich. Not feminists. Not AIDS patients. Not Muslims. Not you. Not your non-church-going neighbor.

No one gets called unclean or impure anymore.

Everything I’ve written on here for the past several months has been based on the premise that, while God calls us to be able to give a rational explanation for why we believe what we believe, we should never give the impression that we’ve got everything all figured out. We should hold our beliefs with conviction but also with humility.

Humility is a strange thing. It’s strongest when it refuses to be strong. When it allows itself to become weak, it is able to accomplish more than our most persuasive arguments.

I hope what I told Jim was the same thing Peter said to Cornelius, “I’m just a regular guy like you.”

Once, God decided to go beyond sending us verbal messages through the prophets. God decided, in some mysterious way to “show up” himself “in person” through Jesus. God’s presence in Jesus Christ was disturbingly human. Jesus slept, ate, got tired, got sweaty, cried and suffered like all of us. One of the big reasons people had a hard time believing Jesus was who he claimed to be was because he seemed too normal.

God communicated his message to us, not in spite of Jesus’ humanity, but through it.

Some Christians come across like they’re selling something. Still other Christians give off the impression that they’ve got everything all together, like they’re superior to their non-Christians neighbors.

Peter says, “I’m just a guy like yourself.”

Don’t think you have anything in common with the worldly people outside your door? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lawn to mow, a mortgage to pay, a job that requires long hours and kids who don’t always do what I want them to do. In these respects (and many others), I am a lot more like my neighbors than I am like the sinless Son of God.

So, with Peter, we should remember that we’re just regular, normal folks who have been given a bigger break than we could ever deserve. We’re, in the words of Bill Hybels, just one group of beggars telling another group of beggars where the bread is.

Odds are, none of your convictions about who is out are as deeply held as Peter’s were. He just figured it was probably not wise to maintain a more rigid standard than God himself holds. It’s one thing to act holier than thou; it’s another thing to act holier than Him!

Again…just good, mental health there.

Peter had just been told — by God — to do something he had always considered to be a sin. But Peter wasn’t allowed much time to think all this through, because some guys from Cornelius’ house showed up and said, “We’re supposed to bring you to our boss.”

Cornelius was Roman – as in Italian. He sent some guys to see Peter, probably some big guys dressed in black togas with sunglasses on and mysterious bulges in their tunics. Peter probably didn’t ask many questions.

When Peter arrived, Cornelius literally fell at his feet. He probably figured that if an angel sent him, he must be special. But Peter’s response is really great – and, again, something Christians should take a lesson from. Peter says, “Stand up, I’m just a regular guy like you.”

Good mental health right there. So many of us feel unqualified to do the work of evangelism because we don’t feel spiritual. We feel so normal, so human. But Peter shows us here that being human is what it’s all about.

All this reminds me of a day I spent with my next-door neighbor, Jim.

Normally, my family’s Saturday routine consists of sleeping in a little, having a big breakfast together and making assignments for what has come to be known as “chore day”. All the things that get piled up during the week get unpiled on Saturday. Laundry gets done. Closets get straightened out. Bathrooms get cleaned. You know the drill.

There was a Saturday a few years back, though, that got interrupted before chores began. We were still sitting at the breakfast table. I hadn’t even managed to get my second cup of coffee before my next-door-neighbor, Jim, rang the doorbell. In an incredibly calm and even voice he said, “John, I need you to run me to the hospital. I think I’m having a stroke.”

He said it in the same way he might say, “John, I need you to run me to the store. I think I need some milk.”

I threw on a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans and spent the rest of the day in the emergency room. Oddly enough, 45 minutes after we got there, he was fine. Something had certainly happened, but he was fine. Still, by then, he’d already had blood taken and was hooked up to the machine that goes “Ping!” So, we had to stay for a while. He tried to run me off, but I stubbornly refused. After all, if I went home, I’d have to scrub toilets.

I stayed, and we talked…about everything, politics and religion (the two things you’re not supposed to talk about in polite company). Jim was incredibly well-read and a deep thinker. He’d given up on church and was pretty sure Jesus was not God (a conviction solidified when his Episcopalian Priest one day told him that no one in seminary believed it anymore, that seminary professors scoffed at the idea, that the only reason anyone preached it from the pulpit was because that’s what they were paid for. Thanks for that, Mr. Episcopalian Priest!)

Still, Jim was a believer of sorts. He knew there was a God. He believed that God had written something of a moral code on his heart. He actually said, “I’ve never doubted what the right thing to do is. I just can’t seem to do what I know is the right thing.” He didn’t even know that his words came straight from the Bible (Romans 7 for those of you keeping score at home).

He was really concerned about the eternal destiny of his Muslim friend from work. He was still confused about why the Baptist church he grew up in fired the one pastor who connected with him. He didn’t understand why religious people are so afraid of mystery. He was angry at television preachers who stole money from his aging relatives.

More than anything, he was worried that, after 66 years of pondering, he may not have made any progress at all in understanding this God who he is convinced exists. I suggested that maybe God really is infinite.

“I don’t know, Jim. How do you measure progress against infinity?” I asked.

He laughed and said, “You may be my kind of preacher.”

I’ll take it.

Shortly after Cornelius received one vision, the apostle Peter received another, an odd dream in which God told Peter to do something his mother had told him was a sin. It was confusing and disorienting for Peter, but Peter learned something all Christians need to learn: Sometimes we label the wrong things “sin”.

Insert your favorite argument here. I’ve probably heard them all. Dancing. R-rated movies. Profanity. Drinking beer.

I’ve already told you that when I was a kid we lived in West Monroe, Louisiana. What I haven’t told you is that the summer camp I attended was called Camp Chi-Yo-Ca – which sounds like an Indian name but is really shorthand for Christian Youth Camp. During camp we had separate pool times for the boys and the girls because some folks from our church thought boys and girls swimming together was a sin. It was called “mixed bathing” and was spoken of in the same hushed tones that might be reserved for the conversation where you gossip about the neighbor girl down the street who got herself into trouble and had to go stay with an aunt in another part of the country for the next few months.

It was considered a serious violation of the rules to have boys and girls swimming together, but every Sunday morning the deacons would gather outside the front door of the church to smoke. Smoking cigarettes wasn’t a sin, you see. It was actually good for the economy. They didn’t smoke because they were addicted to nicotine; they smoked because they were patriots.

Get this straight: In Louisiana, smoking = good; mixed bathing = bad.

Now, imagine my disorientation when, at the tender age of 10, my family moved to southern California, and I discovered that I had my categories precisely reversed.

In California, beach devotionals in swimsuits  = good; smoking = you might be the antichrist.

This is similar to what Peter experiences in Acts 10. Peter has to reconsider his categories. What is sin? What is out of bounds? How far is too far?

Cornelius thought he saw an angel, and I believe he did. My friend Bill thought he felt God’s presence while he was laid out on the floor of a church. And I believe he did. But Cornelius didn’t learn everything there was to know from the Angel, just like my friend Bill didn’t learn everything he needed to know straight from God while he was on the floor.

It seems that God pushes us toward relationships with other people, so we can experience him and find answers.

In fact, the Bible seems to suggest that our relationships with people like Cornelius and Bill may be more effective than supernatural revelations in bringing them to Jesus and helping them grow into mature disciples.

In fact, no one in the New Testament comes to faith apart from a human agent. Look it up for yourself.

Think about the implications of that.

Cornelius wasn’t a Christian, and he wasn’t a Jew. He was a Roman soldier. He tried to do the right thing. He prayed sometimes. He gave money to charity. He was a good guy; he just didn’t belong to any established religion. He probably wasn’t that much different from a lot of folks who live in your neighborhood.

One afternoon, of all things, an angel appeared to him. Now, if your neighbor told you this happened, you might tell the kids to stay inside until the men in white coats came to take your neighbor away. But we really have to be careful not to judge so quickly.

I remember, once, a good friend of mine named Bill got a job playing piano for a church. He was barely a Christian (not in terms of the quality of his faith but in terms of the quantity). He’d been a Christian for just a few months. But this church near his home put an ad in the paper, and he responded. He was to play for a mid-week healing service they held once a month. No big deal, play a few choruses and praise songs, noodle around as background music during prayers, stuff like that.

But, when he got there, something happened. They were short-handed that night and asked him if he would help them out in a different capacity. They wanted to know if he would be a “catcher”.

My friend has a very quick wit and said, “Sure. I played second base in high school, but, okay, I can catch!”

They put some instrumental CDs in the sound system and began praying for folks. Bill stood behind the people being prayed for and waited. At some point, most of these people would go down, some straight back as if they’d been hit in the forehead, others crumpling to the floor in a  heap.

Bill said he could tell that some of them were faking it. But some of them…he wasn’t so sure. In fact, he didn’t quite know what to make of the whole thing.

When everyone had been thoroughly prayed over, the leaders of the service asked if Bill wanted them to pray for him. Figuring you can never be prayed for too much, he said, “Yes.”

So, the team gathered around Bill and began praying. And an amazing thing happened. Bill went down. He said he knew that if he wanted to, he could have stood up and walked away, but it felt really good to just go down. While he was on the floor, he shed a few tears, felt his body relax and spent some time physically experiencing the fact that God was totally in control of the circumstances of his life.

Oddly, when Bill talked to some of the people at his own church about this, they discouraged him from doing it again. They told him he was being indoctrinated into “one of those churches” where they speak in tongues and believe God heals people.

When he called me, he was confused. Did he do something wrong? Should he quit that job and find another one in a safer church? I asked him if he felt closer to God after it was over than he did before. “Sure,” he said. “It felt kind of weird, but it was good weird. And it made me want to read my Bible more to find out if some of the thoughts I had about God while I was ‘out’ are true.”

Now, you may be skeptical about what happened to Bill. I’m a little skeptical about what happened to him, and he’s one of my best friends.

But can something that makes you feel closer to God and makes you want to read the Bible more be all that bad?

The way we’ve been taught to see the kingdom – who’s in and who’s out – is all screwed up. We think certain people are in simply because they have observed our boundary markers, performed certain actions, adopted certain behaviors. They have done this; they do not do that. They must be in.

But this is precisely what Jesus castigated the Pharisees for. They were judging people’s kingdom worthiness based on externals. Were they circumcised? Did they keep kosher? Did they honor the Sabbath? Did they respect the Jewish holidays like Passover? These were the boundary markers for Judaism.

Jesus came, saw their meticulous system and said, “The rituals are in the way now. They’ve become a distraction. All of that stuff points to me anyway. So, if you want to get ‘in’, follow me. In fact, anyone can come in now, regardless of nationality or gender. Olly-olly-oxen-free!”

And this is precisely what they got most angry at Jesus for doing.

The Pharisees had a good thing going. Their system gave them some status in the community, and, more importantly, it made it easy to identify who was “in” and who was “out”. Jesus was messing with their categories, and lowering the standards. Jesus was friends with sinners, and we all know you can judge a man by the company he keeps.

The Apostle Paul followed Jesus’ lead. In Acts 17, Paul marched up to those pagan philosophers on Mars Hill. They had a god for everything under the sun. It was said that in Athens it was easier to find a god than to find a man. Paul got so ticked off at those filthy, pagan, heathen, Athenians, that he went right up to them and said…“God is not far from you” (v. 27).

“Your rituals have become obstacles to what you really want. If you want a relationship with God, well, he’s closer than you might imagine. In fact, you may unknowingly be on a collision course with him right now.”

Okay, with all this in mind, let’s look at a story that comes from one of my favorite passages in the New Testament, about two guys named Peter and Cornelius, and two more stories about some friends of mine, Bill and Jim (whose stories do not come from the New Testament). You can find the first two guys in Acts 10:1-11:18. For Bill and Jim, you’ll have to follow along here over the next few days.

The Bible says, “Love believes all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7, NASB).

But I don’t.

Obviously, the Bible’s not talking about being naïve. I think the Bible is saying that love always believes the best; love gives the beloved the benefit of the doubt.

But I don’t.

Well, I do. I give my kids the benefit of the doubt when they’re talking to me. I give my sister the benefit of the doubt when I read an email from her. When my best friend sends me a confusing text message, I give him the benefit of the doubt. I do this with people I love.

I just don’t love many people.

What if I chose to love more people? What if I chose to love authors and speakers and film makers and song writers in this way? What if reading and listening became an act of Christian love for me?

That’s the most convicting thought I’ve had in the past few years — maybe the most convicting thought ever. I remember where I was sitting when it hit me. And since then, I’ve been trying to make some changes.

Now, as I read an author or listen to a speaker or have a conversation, I’m trying to get myself out of a judgmental posture and ask myself, “How would I read this if I loved the author? How would I listen if I loved this speaker?”

I am an author and a professional speaker – that’s what I’ll put on my tax form this year. And I have to say: getting up to speak in front of a group of people is one of the most nerve-wracking endeavors imaginable. A close second would be actually sitting down and putting thoughts on paper for people to read. I am vulnerable when I do that. I am especially vulnerable to criticism immediately after I’m done. And, having worked with pastors and preachers from Seattle to Orlando, I know that I am far from alone.

There are books I disagree with. There are speakers who spout error of all kinds. There is a time for healthy disagreement and even confrontation and rebuttal. But I have been humbled and convicted by God about the way I read and the way I listen. All too often I listen for a chance to disagree, confront and rebut. I sit, like Simon Cowell, listening for a mistake, hoping they’re off-key so I can appear witty, intelligent and superior.

I’m not rooting for the speaker.

I’m not loving the author.

And that – most assuredly – is not living Christianly.

The Bible says flatly, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6b). That’s what comes when we’ve been fully submerged in the grace of God, the unmerited, unearned favor of our Creator and Redeemer. When you finally get grace – or when grace finally gets you – you’ll find it impossible to sit in judgment of someone else. You’ll realize that you’re not “in” because you’re smarter than someone else or more theologically precise in your terminology.

Sitting in judgment like that becomes repulsive to you because you realize it’s usurping the role of the One who has the right to sit in judgment of you but has extended mercy and kindness, forgiveness and love instead.

Jesus seemed to think that acceptance and forgiveness could accomplish what judgment and condemnation never could. When you become like him, you’ll begin to see things that way, too.

Everything I said yesterday about reading applies to listening as well — especially listening to sermons.

As a guy who speaks in just about every kind of church you can imagine, I cannot tell you how many people seem to listen at me rather than listening to (or even with) me. They sit there, arms folded, listening for error or listening to make sure I touch all the appropriate bases. They listen to sermons the way an umpire watches a baseball game. They don’t listen for personal transformation. They don’t listen to grow.

These are the people who always want clarification on some fine point of something I said in passing that wasn’t even the point I was trying to make. These are the people who want to know what version of the Bible I was reading from and why. These are the people who want to know where I went to seminary. These are also the people who wish their brother-in-law had heard the message. They want to get a copy of the CD for someone at work, because it was just the sort of message someone else needed to hear.

These people never come and tell me that it was just what they needed to hear. They never tell me how they could grow from the message or how they plan on applying it to their lives.

Please understand that not everyone does this. There are also plenty of folks who listen well and humbly seek to apply whatever truth they find in the sermons they hear to their personal lives. I love these people, and I wish I were more like them.

Honestly, I am as guilty of this error as anyone else. One of the things I do – as part of my work – is critique sermons. Preachers often ask me for advice or help or coaching in becoming better communicators. Sadly, it’s become difficult for me to listen to a sermon for spiritual formation now, because I’m always thinking about how the speaker could have communicated his/her points more effectively.

But what would change if I started listening to sermons the way I just suggested we ought to read? What if I first asked myself, “What does this sermon teach me about the character and nature of God?” And second, “How can I apply this sermon in such a way as to help me grow in my ability to love and be loved by God and others?”

Maybe this would eliminate a lot of the bickering and divisiveness Christianity currently experiences. Here, at last, is a way for Calvinists and Arminians to read one another without feeling the need to get all bent out of shape. The Piper-ites and the Bell-eons can listen to and with one another, rather than simply listening at one another.

If they choose to.

Sadly, I doubt they will.

But love believes all things, so I will continue to hope towards that end.