August 19, 2008
The Smell Test
Church membership was the topic of a recent sermon and our preacher interjected a cute illustration. “The stench inside the ark would have been unbearable if it weren’t for the storm outside.” What a great observation. We in the church are in the never ending process of cleaning up our attitudes and our actions. No matter how dirty, unsightly or smelly we are its better being in the church than it is out there in the world. “For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life…” (2 Cor 2:15-16a NIV)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----I remember an analogy that for a couple weeks hung around the church we used to attend. I think it came from a book, or something. And although I don’t remember its details or its story line, it was about a little shack down by the seashore. The shack was always full of mud, seaweed, and other smelly sea stuff. The point of the story bothered me, so I remembered it well. When those of the shack were asked why the shack was such a mess, they said it was used to rescue victims from the raging sea. The victims had come in covered with filth, therefore the shack got very messy. And at this everyone was supposed to oooh and ahhh at how compassionate it was to get so dirty in saving poor sea victims. From that realization they were expected to finally understand why preachers were standing in front of us in polo shirts and Levis while elders sat in the back with their hairy legs poking out of cut offs and their nasty, sockless, sandaled feet propped up on a bar stool. It was all to make the sea weedy, mucky ones comfortable with the church. No wonder these guys never wanted to sing “How Great Thou Art.”
-----But it is not the Word of God that tells us to drape seaweed over the fireplace mantle and paint the walls with the seafloor muck. The Bible tells us to help others out of their sins, being careful not to get caught ourselves. There are even some sins that are so bad Paul commands the doers be put out of the church. (I Cor 5:3-5). Christ’s Bride was not called to wear seaweed and rotten muck. God gave her some responsibility to stay at least reasonably clean and pure. In short, the “repent” part of Peter’s answer on the Day of Pentecost is not to be nullified by our fear that victims of the sea might not choose to stay at the shack unless it, too, is as comfortably mucky as they are. “Come as you are” may be somewhat implied by the Bible, but His Word does not imply “stay as you are“.
-----That is why this whole casual thing does not sit well in my soul. I know there is no Scriptural imperative to dressing up for church. But neither is it simply a cultural thing. It goes beyond a statement made merely by clothing. It reaches to a statement about self and others, independence and dependence, free-wheeling and rule-following. Man’s nature does not like following rules; it likes self rule. The old dress-up-for-church thing was not a rule, though it was like a rule. What it did was to gird up an attitude of respect for etiquette and rules alike, an attitude that young people rebel against, a rebellion the Bible says must be beat out of the child (Prov. 22:15; 12:1; 13:24; 15:10; 19:18; 23:12-18 RSV). Yet we invite the seeds of the no-rules, no-etiquette attitude into the church and give it comfort by our oh-it’s-just-us-here styles. We forget that we have been made special, holy, and set apart to share the throne of Christ. Certainly a blue jeans event!
-----It isn’t that the church was not dirty, unsightly, or smelly before we decided to please ourselves with casual relaxation. It was. It is that what little regard for etiquette and rules the church had, what little deodorant it had, if you will, was further worn down by the acceptance of more seaweed and seafloor muck. God gave us all gifts. And I have always believed He gave to some diplomatic abilities to shovel mucky seaweed out the back door. Unfortunately, new attitudes brought into the church takes away their shovels and gives them dirty looks. Oh well, I guess we’re not stinking too much more.
Love,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment