“Dear God, Save me from Your followers.” -Bumper Sticker
I was talking to a guy who spent 25+ years at one church. He left the church peacefully because of doctrinal disagreements. He told me that the church friends he and his family had been friends with that whole time, the kids his kids had grown up with, the people that were over his house once or twice a week were all of a sudden too busy to come over. They were too overwhelmed to call. All of a sudden best friends turned into awkward run-ins at the supermarket.
This totally sucks. It was a huge blow to my family when we left a church and then apparently in the world of Facebook, cell phones, and Twitter, everybody’s too busy to communicate. One time and this wouldn’t be too bad, but three or four times really makes me sick.
It’s usually at this point that I fall back onto my FTW attitude and if they don’t want to have anything to do with me then I don’t want to have anything to do with them. I’m hoping as I age I mellow out, but it isn’t looking good. So what do I do? Well, like any red blooded American I start to blame the church. My issues aren’t with Jesus. My issues are now with the suits and ties that run a church. They might not actually wear suits and ties, they might be cool and all with ripped jeans and sagging beanies, but you get the point. They’re so judgemental. They’re so hypocritical. They’re why nobody is getting saved. They are what’s wrong with the church. They are why people stop going to church.
Then I look in the mirror and say, “Oh crap, that’s me.”
It only takes a quick observation for me to realize I am a huge piece of that problem. I am part of the Church. Do I get judged a lot? Yes I do. I can tell when my tattoos and clothes bother pastors because they continue to remind me how it doesn’t bother them and their so happy somebody “like me” is at their church. Do I judge right back? Hell yes I do. I let them know how lucky they are to have somebody “like me” be willing to work with them.
Is the problem that people are judgemental? Partly. Is the problem that people care more about function and form then the Gospel? Sometimes. The problem really lies in the fact that God made His church out of a bunch of dirty no good sinners who at times, regardless of how holy we try to come across, are just dirty no good sinners. The problem isn’t inherent with the church its inherent with the human race.
“...for all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.” -Romans 3:23. This is a verse we tell most non Christians when we’re trying to get them saved. Then we shift our focus to
2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ a new creation has come: the old is gone and the new is here!” What we often forget is that one verse doesn’t cancel out the other. Yes we are a new creation, but we are still sinners. Yes that person who once was an alcoholic who was getting hammered every night is now an alcoholic who isn’t getting hammered every night. If he relapses is he no longer a new creation? Nope. He still is a new creation he’s just still a sinner.Savvy?
What we do is we put unrealistic expectations on our fellow Christians. Should we hold each other accountable to living as Christ did? By all means. Should we be critical of things in the Church organization that are opposed to the Bible (which, come on, wake up America, we are saturated in it)? Oh, you better believe it, sister.
Since we are a bunch of dirty rotten sinners we often do the opposite of what needs to be done. When we see other Christians in the church (leadership or not) acting in a way that isn’t Biblical we shouldn’t go around and bad mouth. We shouldn’t be sneaky and remove them. We need to treat the Church like we treat ourselves.
I got really chubby my freshman year of college. I hated the way I looked. When I decided to lose weight I started to take care of myself. If I didn’t change my life I’d be Biggest Loser material by now. If I started tickling my tonsils and revisiting every meal I would be hurting myself. If I started avoiding food then I’d be abusing the body I wanted to make better. We do this with church because we forget, “so in Christ we, though we are many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Romans 12:5
Ain’t that a punch to the gut? When was the last time you looked around your church service and thought, “Dang, we’re all many parts of one body that all belong to each other”? I don’t do this.
“That dude left,” or “We left that church” and “They don’t see everything the way I see it,” these are all crappy reasons to leave and bad mouth. You’ll fix nothing. In fact you’ll be hurting your faith and the faith of others. All of my friends that have left church because of the BS (and there is plenty) and tried to make it on their own have never survived in the faith. The ones who do are like unicorns. We all hear about them, people have claimed they exist, but we don’t really know any. They’re always our friend’s, cousin’s second roommate’s, niece's boyfriend’s dog walker. We don’t survive Christian isolationism because we weren’t built for it.
The issue lies here: why are we going to church? Even better, why are we Christians? Are we going to church and calling ourselves Christians because it’s better than crack? Are we going to church for friendships, healings, and warm fuzzy feelings? Are we going to church, reading our Bibles, and living the “Christian” life to make us better people? If we are then we are putting unfair expectations on things.
I’ve been around enough Christians to realize that people are dumb. I’ve been in enough non Christians to realize that people are dumb. It’s an epidemic. If we are searching amongst these people for the answers to all our problems then we are part of the epidemic. We can’t expect sick people to make us well. We need to be going to church, following Christ, pursuing relationships based solely out of adoration for Jesus. Anything else is idolatry and will lead us nowhere.
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