September 05, 2007
Save the Children
Television segments about the food crisis in Africa and other programs depicting starving children pull at my heartstrings. I find them difficult to watch for any length of time before flipping to another network. There’s a similar situation taking place in the church. Rather than look upon spiritual starvation, our leaders simply flip our attention to a new program, motto or method. By focusing on the hand clapping, smiling faces of the contemporary crowd we don’t have to look at our gaunt, neglected and spiritually malnourished brothers – nor must we calculate those who’ve already starved to death.
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Gail;
-----I feel AWOL. Sometimes guilt climbs over me because I packed my spiritual bags and left your church after the elders slandered Char and I before that whole congregation. I was prepared to make them face their slander. I had all the evidence necessary that would have eventually compelled them to stand before the people at that church and apologize not to Char and me, but to the congregation for deceiving them. But everyone objected to the idea of forcing them to show their hand. And although I know the Lord works through the willingness of His people to step forward and take action against what is wrong, besides merely doing what is right, I listened. I abandoned my post.
-----Really, I am surprised to read your mention of malnourished brethren. I thought that by now everyone was either gone from there or had relented to feeding on the saw-dust and straw that is being fed. And I had hoped that someone in addition to you would take action and continue to hold those leaders’ partiality up into the light of the Scripture and the sight of the congregation. And as bad as I feel about being AWOL, I also know that others are responsible for their posts as well.
-----But what I do not forget is that it is always easier to see the flaws in someone else’s efforts than it is to see them in my own. Despite the fact that you and I have seen the greater portion of those who were there ten years ago be driven off by servants insisting on their own ways, I still must look at those servants objectively. Even though what they are doing is clearly unscriptural by the principles of Ezekiel 34:1-5, 18-21; Malachi 2:4-9; and James 2:8-9, I still must look at them in the light of I Corinthians 3:12-15 and James 2:13.
-----A few in your church ten years ago were nourished by the new sawdust and straw diet. Several others adjusted to it. Since then, multitudes have come in who thrive on that kind of diet. These leaders have shown absolute partiality towards them by dispensing the sawdust and straw while refusing to feed hay and clover to the few remaining who grew up on it and still need it. More than once I had to sit and console some old soul who had been rudely put down with hostility after approaching one of those leaders about getting a little hay and clover back into the feed.
-----And yet, besides the rudeness and hostility, beyond the partiality and selfish ambition, there is still beneficial service to the Lord. Because what makes the feed to be sawdust and straw is not as much the nature of the feed as it is the nature of the one biting into it. So also those who left the church, including myself, could have yielded to the controlling demands of the leaders, letting that be the leaders’ sin as much as many of my own sins are let to be my sins. We could have joined in the culture that the leaders insisted upon and practiced the methods they demanded. Then the church could have proceeded in the “unity” of yield to the domination of elders and the following of men. The Lord would also have reaped some benefit from that. But we did not. We struggled for what was right. And the Lord reaped some benefit from that.
-----For it is the Lord Who is perfect enough to reap benefit from what ever flawed efforts we humans make. If He were not, none of our efforts would be worth the sawdust of which they are made. I believe the Word calls everyone to look at all things in the truth of what they are and speak such about it. So I look at the crushed hearts, and the streams of tears, and the bitterness, animosities, and struggles that have resulted from the favoritism of those leaders towards the jolly, jubilant eaters of lite-Bible, and I must admit that amongst their actions of death they are also producing actions of life. And that is kind of like me. Too bad we are not all more like the Lord.
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