The voice of a faith is not always the voice of its leaders

It continually astounds me how people can live their faith despite what the leaders of that faith say it should be.

Take Ali - a young lady who is one of the most Christian people I have ever met. She is a good Catholic girl, follows her faith, lives it out in all she does, serves others and works hard in her parish, her priest thinks she is one of the greatest assets to the community. All sounds great except the leaders of her church would disown her because she is gay. 

Eric works hard for the church. He is the caretaker. Almost everyday he goes in and scrubs and polishes, buffs and shines. He picks up the rubbish left by the congregations that meet during the week, he cleans the toilets and even makes sure that the gardens look tidy. Expect Eric can't attend the church, the preacher has said it's for whites only and Eric has a little too much colour - he's black. 

Take a look at this picture 

- this is one of hundreds that you can find online. It's an image of Muslim men protecting their Christian brothers as they hold their service. What's wrong with this image...? Well the main thing wrong (or right) with it is that if these men listened to many of their Imams they would be burning the church not protecting it.

Zac was a thief. He hid it well under the guise of his job but he always took a little off the side. Despite this the Man had come to dinner at his place. Despite what the leaders said (He eats with that kind) the Man still came. Zac changed, the high ups didn't; they still whined and moaned about what's wrong, but Zac had changed. He came to realise that people usually do change when they meet the Man, but what does that say about the high ups??