On a hill in Montreal beckons the grand edifice, its cross-peaked dome the crowning point of the city. Looming, hovering, intimidating, inspiring, St. Joseph’s Oratory stands watch as pilgrims prayerfully climb its stream of wooden steps on their knees, inching higher and higher to place they hope to find healing. Within its walls one finds the remnants left by those who have come before—racks built into the walls covered with the long wooden crutches of men and the short ones of children, and well worn canes once gripped by desperate hands. They are the marks of the sick, the disabled, the weak, the injured, those whose bodies bore the blight of our human frailty. They are the marks of ones who came to a holy place broken and left whole, healed, restored.

Imagine with me for a moment if our church walls were covered with the symbols and markers of what were once our greatest weaknesses, our most painful limitations, those low places in which God met us and changed beauty into ashes, mourning into joy.

This is something I can’t help but love about the Catholic tradition—there is something very physical and embodied in the way they mark the places in which God has worked, as physical signs of remembrance memorialize spiritual histories. They are modern Ebenezer stones, declaring “Thus far the Lord has helped us” (1 Sam. 7:12). But for those of us in more Protestant traditions, we rarely are left with tangible objects to remind us of God’s workings in the past.

What would your “crutch” be hanging on the walls of such a place, my friend? What infirmities have you left behind to walk in freedom?

Some are physical—like the crutches and canes hanging on the walls of St. Joseph’s—the defeated cancer, the miraculous second chance at life, the work of the right treatment by the right doctor in the precise moment of your need. For some, though, dare I say most of us, our weaknesses, our “crutches” in which God has done his work, are hidden, subtle, difficult to embody in a form for all to see—depression lifted, shattered relationships restored, secret addictions defeated; overcoming pornography or eating disorders, perfectionism or workaholism, anger or shame. These victories too are the healings of God, the moments in which His hand of mercy reached into our helplessness and set us on our feet again. These too are His work in strengthening us to run in places before we could only limp and crawl.

How many times have you had to qualify the term Christian? We use adjectives—“real Christian,” “genuine Christian,” “nominal Christian,” and so on—to describe what we mean. We define Christians by their views on particular issues—women in ministry, infant or adult baptism, their political leanings, their style of worship and music, or [add your pet issue here]. In college I was shocked to find that after my name, major, and hometown, the most commonly asked introductory chit-chat question was my church denomination. We do this too, dismissing or lauding a person by his or her adherence to a particular religious flavor—Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Catholic, Methodist.

[On this denominational front, I’ve always been thankful to be hard to nail down—I grew up in a tiny denomination few have heard of, attended an Anglican church plant throughout college, and now attend a church subtly connected to a Baptist denomination.]

We like labels. We like their ability to describe more clearly our meaning, lest anyone misunderstand what type of Christian of which we speak. We like to make judgment-calls on who is serious about the faith, who the “real” Christians are—and who are the imposters. We like our clean, clear-cut categorical boxes into which we can lock other people.

I must admit that I do this. I catch words coming to my lips; I catch my index and middle finger bending, gesturing to form quotation marks in the air around my words as they escape. I catch my thoughts crafting judgments on the quality and genuineness of another’s faith based on their actions, their commentary, or their attitude.

How quickly we forget that “we are all beggars.” How quickly we forget how easy it is to misrepresent our Lord. How quickly we forget that these categories are of our own creation—how quickly we allow them to divide us, to justify the judgments we cast.

How tragic it is that we feel the need to further qualify the word “Christian” at all.

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