August 07, 2007
Are You Comfy?
When I tell house guests ‘make yourself at home’ I want them to be comfortable, not take over my home and rearrange it as if it were theirs. I see this scenario being played out in the church. We’ve discarded the communion table, removed the flags (American and Christian) and changed the music. For the sake of the seeker, we’re told to toss traditions, shut down Sunday schools and avoid altar calls. Personally I think today’s church has been lulled into believing that accommodation is the same thing as evangelism.
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Gail;
-----I am currently reading a book called “Christianity for the Rest of Us,” by Helen Butler-Bass. Char thought this would be an interesting book because it was promoted as concluding that Christianity was alive and doing well in churches other than mega-churches. She dabbled in the book here and there and then handed it off to me with a dismissing comment. Yesterday, I read in it the testimony of one man received with gleeful reverberation by a prideful congregation the author had visited. It seemed the man awoke to his true identity. God brought him to the courage needed to come out of the closet as a gay, to divorce his wife, and to now, as a single gay man, raise his 5 year old daughter. All while being accepted by the church! It was such a testimony to the accepting nature of this church. What a great and wonderful church it was for it’s open, non-judgmental love for all who need acceptance in the Lord!
-----My mind was naturally drawn to what I had read in the previous chapter about another church the author had drooled over. In that church’s serene contemplation it had not found a God to be feared, but a God of communion. When I had read that, it struck me quickly - this was the key to understanding not just the liberal church, but also the contemporary church. The fear of God is missing. God has to be seen and presented by these churches as a goody-goody guy, kind of like a jolly old Santa in procession down the street amongst hordes of his jolly, exuberant, little minions all throwing jolly candies to the on-looking crowds. Oh! Isn’t it so wonderful!? No.
-----The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Even the liberals and the contemporaries can quote that one. But they both wish to claim wisdom while condemning fear. We are all incorrect in many more ways than we are correct, by far. We have all sinned and fallen so short of the glory of God that our own righteousness is as filthy rags to God. It is the fear of God that keeps us on the search for our faulty ways and how to solve them, at least somewhat. By the fear of God we take the Word of God seriously and understand it as applying to ourselves surely.
-----The Bible does not have a great deal to say about the structure, organization, and cultural nature of the church, directly. The church as presented in the Word is a holy structure built of all those who come to Jesus Christ, and the Bible has everything to say about each of these, directly. It speaks of dying to self, putting self off, taking interest in the interests of others, pleasing others, acknowledging others, and accepting others who are walking in and into the light as well. A group of people who individually practice these character traits will form a church in which such things as the presence or absence of a communion table, podium, flags, etc. will be the natural expression of who they are and what they think about God. It needs no tampering by some group of men who think they have been told by God to change not only these naturally occurring expressions, but also how any of God’s children should think and feel about them. That is not acceptance nor acknowledgement of one another. It is not taking interest in other’s interests. Nor is it pleasing others, honoring others, or loving others. But the insistence that it must be done so that the church will be found acceptable by the unwashed is the taking of a domineering position over the others to insist on one’s own ways, ideas, and Biblical understandings. It is themselves they glory to see reflected in the church décor.
-----It does not seem that somebody has been taking the Bible too seriously. It does not seem that somebody has been fearing the Lord. If our testimonies do not admit to the Word of the Lord and the fear of God as guardrails for our inter-relationships we will become anything to be acceptable to the loose and self-fashioned, the self-made and self-seeing, the mystic, and the one who walks by visions from angels. This always seems to work back around to the indulgence of the flesh in self-pride. We may as well all be gay and divorce one another. Or we can fear God and learn His Word as He wrote it.
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