(this is a very rough draft, mostly used to get some thoughts “on paper”, but I’m publishing it now. Please feel free to leave comments.)
Recently I’ve been reflecting on some issues that I’ve long believed plague the Christian church and, as I’m going to try to start doing, I’m going to explore those thoughts here.
Christian’s are referred to as being “born again”. Born into a life, not free from sin, but a life that is supposed to be lived in forgiveness, reconciled to our God and seeking to grow to be like Christ. I wonder, though, how many people really try to live like this.
I first entered into relationship with Christ when I was 12 and for most of my life since that day, I’ve lived the lifestyle of a religious idiot that just didn’t understand what it was all about. Partly, this was my fault, because I didn’t take the time to read the Word and find out. Frankly, at 12 years old, it didn’t make much sense and the Bible came with this certain stigma that made it intimidating for me to think about getting involved in reading. I knew I should do it, but didn’t know why and, consequently, lacked any real motivation to do so. Obligation will motivate someone for only so long before they start looking around and, seeing no one there to scold them for not doing as they ought, just stop doing it.
I lived this way for nearly 20 years and only about 7 years ago did I start really making an effort to grow up. The first rule I learned about growing up spiritually was to stop looking at other people’s mistakes, sins and other miscellaneous transgressions. As Christ taught, I started looking for the plank in my own eye rather than the spec in someone elses. I learned 2 things from this process.
First, I learned that I wasn’t alone and a large number of people that call themselves born again Christians spend their time not looking inward and trying to develop themselves, but rather vent their rage at people committing the same sins they do. I think these people know that things in their life need to change, but they’re unwilling to change them. Not long ago, I read an article that claimed that the American church doesn’t have the revival that they say they want because they don’t really want it. Revival requires personal change and people are to comfortable with their get out of hell free card to worry about changing themselves, all while being perfectly comfortable condemning others to hell over the aforementioned mutual sins. I think at least part of this stems from people’s inability to forgive themselves for what they perceive as failure. They have no compassion on themselves when they fail and it leads to further damage being inflicted on their already fragile egos.
Second, we hold people that aren’t Christians at a distance and refuse to show them the love and compassion that Christ showed the people he ministered to during his time on earth. He absolutely told the truth on people but even those that rejected him were shown love and compassion. Even those that put him on the cross were shown love and compassion; some of his last words on this earth were “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do”. The president of the Barna Research Group, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, who left the Barna Group to found Fermi Project (I think, he may have co-founded Catalyst after his tenure at the Barna Group, but I’ve not verified this point yet) wrote a book called unChristian (new window) that explores 3 years of research into the opinions and attitudes of people looking at the Christian Church from the outside (and thus called “outsiders”) that I’m only just beginning to read but promises to hold some interesting criticism of the church in America.
Anyway, this isn’t intended to go so far in depth, so I’ll sum up here and move on for the time being. In a nutshell, I think that people need to grow up, as it were. Christians need to mature in Christ so they can start showing themselves, their brothers and sisters in Christ, and the people we’re called to minister to the love and compassion that Christ showed every day of his life. Those outside the church don’t care what we have to say until they’ve seen how we live and how we treat those we come in contact with and we continue to live our lives in self-inflicted condemnation for sins that we should really be forgiving ourselves for an working to overcome.