Win Them with Dinner

From Gospel Translations

Practicing Hospitality in Post-Christian Places

In 2015, the Supreme Court (in Obergefell v. Hodges) voted to legalize so-called same-sex marriage in all fifty states. With this decision came the concept of “dignitary harm,” declaring the failure to affirm LGBTQ+ identity a damaging harm to those who define themselves by these letters. While the gospel of Jesus Christ affirms only one fundamental identity — male or female image-bearers of a holy God (Genesis 1:27) — the laws of the land declare that how you feel is now who you are.

In 2020, the Supreme Court (in Bostock v. Clayton) added LGBTQ+ to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, thus making that which God calls sin a protected civil right. This decision led to changes in Title 9, the landmark federal civil-rights law of 1972 that prohibited sex-based discrimination in government schools and sports programs. Americans live in a nation of redefined terms, including “sex,” which now means “gender identity.” This explains why it is legal for biological men to play women’s sports and undress in women’s locker rooms.

In 2021, the U.S. government, following Bostock and the redefined Title 9, promoted a federally mandated anti-bullying program for use in government schools — all of them. A “bully” is now someone who refuses to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ movement.

Such are the times in which we live. And we are tempted to believe that these cultural circumstances make us strangers and exiles in a world that once embraced our values. But that’s not the whole story.

What Makes Us Strangers?

Biblical giants such as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Sarah, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and others “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). When political dangers in a post-Christian society threaten loss of reputation, job, or even life, we are tempted to conclude that our pilgrim and exile status came through recent circumstances.

But that misses the all-important point: we are exiles and strangers not primarily by circumstance but by confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no doubt that the personal relationship believers have with Jesus Christ is our greatest comfort in this world — and the next one. But there is an additional side to our Christian witness that we must not neglect — the side that understands the ascended Christ sitting at the right hand of God the Father. Christ’s exaltation — his heavenly enthronement at God’s right hand — positions him as Head over all things, in fulfillment of the Great Commission, for the sake of his bride, the church, and the blessing of the world (Ephesians 1:22; Matthew 28:18).

Our station as exiles and strangers surely tests our faith. And this test may tempt us to take cover in one of two extremes: hiding with passive piety in private or fighting with worldly anger in public. The former elevates our personal relationship with our Lord and Savior over his state of exaltation (Psalm 2:10–12). The latter elevates the exaltation of Christ as King as something separate from the Great Commission.

Exiles with an Open Door

Practicing hospitality — loving strangers — is one vital way to bring together our personal relationship with Jesus with honoring him as King. We can practice hospitality with joy in a post-Christian society — and we must.

Where should we start?

1. Your Church

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

On many a Lord’s Day, you meet strangers at church, visitors who may have traveled a long way to arrive at the pew next to you. Get into the regular practice of having your house ready to provide spontaneous guests with a meal after church. The meal does not have to be elaborate. A short respite of fruit and snacks along with Christian fellowship and prayer is a welcome treat for weary travelers.

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:1–2)

God commands us to show hospitality to strangers — a category that includes both believers and unbelievers — and he has set aside blessings for us when we obey. Who are the people in your church easy to neglect? Older and younger singles? Shut-ins? Young mothers? Work with your church to develop consistent opportunities for singles to be in your home, and together develop an outreach to those unable to leave their homes.

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)

Often, we fall into grumbling when we feel that we are shouldering a hard task alone. Don’t practice hospitality alone. Have you considered organizing a regular Lord’s Day lunch after worship for all who wish to join? This can be done at the church building directly after worship, and if you do this every week, the routine becomes something that everyone looks forward to. Every household could simply bring a Crock-Pot with a favorite dish. Sharing the hospitality duties with others makes for more joy, less awkwardness, and no grumbling.

2. Your Neighborhood

For over a decade now, my husband and I have invited neighbors over for food and fellowship. Last year, we invited neighbors to join us in Christmas caroling. We delivered handmade cards and invited everyone on the block to come over before going out to sing. Over thirty people came, some even bringing extended family members from out of town.

We gathered in the house, and our associate pastor, Drew Poplin, delivered an evangelistic message, reading from Luke 2 and introducing Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners just like us. We prayed, distributed songbooks, and headed out the door. The children squealed in delight, ringing sleigh bells, forging ahead of the grown-ups to gather at open, welcoming doors. Accompanied by our pastor’s guitar and strong voice, we sang our hearts out, sometimes even in four-part harmony! When it was too dark to keep a careful eye on children and dogs, we returned to our house for coffee and cookies.

My new neighbor, Jacob, asked if I would hold his sleepy toddler, Jimmy, while he poured himself a cup of coffee. After some small talk about where they live, when they moved in, and general glee about the fun night we were all experiencing, Jacob said, “Hey, I read about you in the newspaper, and I have a question for you.”

I told him to ask me anything.

“You seem like a nice lady. So, why do you hate trans folks?” Jacob asked.

“I don’t hate anyone,” I replied. “I’m a Christian, and I truly love all of my neighbors. But I hate worldviews that lie to people about who we are — image-bearers of God. Because worldviews have consequences and bad ones have casualties, I hate transgender ideology.”

“Why?” Jacob inquired.

I shifted Jimmy on my hip and held him up, saying, “This is why. Jimmy is a boy, and I will defend his right to be a boy.”

Jacob nodded in complete agreement. It turns out that Jacob works in the school system, and he, a young white man, feels both the squeeze of political correctness and the threat of job loss.

“So why do you speak at school-board meetings when they hate you?” he asked.

“I believe that my job as a Christian is to restore truth to the public square. I worked on the bill that became the Parental Rights Law. I think parents have the right to protect their children and that enrolling a child in public schools does not make the school a co-parent.”

Jacob nodded his head and said that finding truth in the public square seems harder and harder. I introduced him to some of the other Christians in the neighborhood, also milling about the kitchen looking for coffee and cookies, and soon we had a lively discussion about parental rights underway, with phone numbers swapped and invitations to churches pouring out.

3. Your City

I’m a twenty-year veteran of homeschooling, but I care deeply about the Christians whose children are enrolled in the public school system for the simple reason that I am a Christian. We are called to let our reasonableness be known to all men (Philippians 4:5), and some of those men (and women) are on the school board.

Parental-rights laws across the nation have been hotly contested by school boards. Last year, I and others from local churches in Durham prepared three-minute speeches explaining and defending parental rights and responsibilities and the concerns we all had about the activist “science” behind transgenderism. Although these meetings are stressful, we stick around to talk to the people who oppose our message. “This is the world that Jesus came to save,” my 21-year-old son, who accompanies me to these meetings, often reminds me. We have found that people are people, and that all people need Christ.

Last year, we had the privilege of having dinner with a family whose gender-anxious and autistic son had been living a secret life as a girl at school. It took the parents two years to uncover the truth, and they were flabbergasted to realize that concealing this important information from them was legal under Title 9. They happily received our invitation to talk, and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. When the night arrived to host this family, we were delighted to discover that we shared many things in common. Throughout the dinner, the parents peppered us with questions about God: Who is he? Does he care about me? After dinner, my husband led in family devotions: Bible reading and prayer.

We learned that parents are often treated like the enemy by the transgender movement, and they — and their children — are in great need of the gospel. For many people who have been ferried down the transgender conveyor belt — traveling from social transition (false pronouns and clothes) to hormonal transition (cross-sex hormones) to surgical transition (genital mutilation) — the great promise of glory, of a new heaven and a new earth where souls and bodies of believers are reunited and glorified, is uniquely cherished. That family we invited to dinner after a school board meeting is now attending church, and their son is healing from the hurt of those years.

Hospitality is a command for a reason: it never fails to show Christian compassion to the stranger in need. Practicing hospitality in a post-Christian society loves the stranger while remembering that we too are strangers and exiles by confession and not merely circumstance.