If you have not read Stories Versus Truth, you may want to read that before reading this.
You may hear this question. “What about all the things that are wrong with the Church?”
And you may hear about very specific things that are wrong with certain members of the church. You may hear these things from people who have left the church, who never were in the church, who are believers, and who are unbelievers.
You may hear this as an excuse not to receive Jesus as Lord. You may hear this as a reason not to attend church. You may hear this as a reason to reject miracles, the moving of God’s Spirit, or anything else that is of God.
In most cases, this is an excuse that someone gives so that they don’t have to obey Christ.
As with most accusations and judgmentalism, there is usually some element of truth. Those who are following Christ are flawed people. They are often broken people. Every one has a past that they rejected for Christ. And not everyone in the Church is following Christ. Not everyone who is religious is following Christ.
The fact that a person could question the things that are wrong in the church is an indication that you are seeing that there are things that are the Church and things that are not the Church. They are seeing that there are things that have come into the Church that are not of the Church. They can see that these things don’t belong there.
They are saying that they have some sense of the difference between right and wrong and the holy as opposed to the profane.
Will this person just stand as a judge and reject Jesus Christ and His Church, or will this person seek and find those who are moving on with Jesus to that Church that will be without spot or wrinkle?
The church is called to become what is right in the Earth. It is to be the salt of the earth, preserving that which has died and healing that which is infected. It is called to be the light of the world. Christ is to flow out through each member to believers and unbelievers alike. The love, which God is, is to be alive in every member. When the church stops walking in righteousness or when the church becomes lukewarm, the unbeliever becomes confused and rightly asks, “What about all the things that are wrong with the Church?”
When a person becomes a member of the Church, they do not join. There is no way to join the Church. They may join an organization, and that organization may call itself a church, but the real Church is something else. You must be born in. If you are born in, you are born as a baby. Maturity will come if you walk with God. Unfortunately, many Christians never mature because they never walk with God. Immaturity in Christians is confusing to unbelievers, causing them to say, “Look at all the things that are wrong with the Church.”
That being said, unbelievers need to realize the following:
If any person believes in right and wrong, then they do not believe in materialism. Materialism has no basis for right or wrong. Relativism is the belief that there is no right or wrong. Post Modernism is really just a mental framework for Relativism. An evolutionist, relativist, materialist, naturalist, agnostic, post-modernist, Unitarian, or Emergent has no basis for any talk about right, wrong, error, correctness, morals, values, or any such thing. When they engage in talk about any of these subjects, implying that someone is doing something wrong, they are simply hypocrites.
If the person is looking for a perfect church, it would be difficult to find such a thing. The very act of being born into the church is an admission of a sin and short-coming. Every person who is born into the Church is admitting a short-coming.
So, we are not going to find a perfect church until we come to an event that the Bible predicts, the manifestation of the sons of God.
If this person is looking at the church in a way that is causing cynicism, the source of this judgmental attitude is not the Spirit of God. It is important for each member to seek God that his or her calling will be sure. We need to look into the Word and see how to minister to our brother and sister in the Church. When God reveals the order of the Body of Christ and the reality of the life that is available through Christ, this moves us toward God and toward our brothers and sisters in Christ. Satan only wants to destroy and take us away from Christ and His life.
