Stop hanging this around the church’s neck
A purging of the rolls in order?
JD Greear is a preacher and former president of the Southern Baptist convention. He recently made a comment that caught my eye.
If you don’t follow the point that he’s making, I will try to restate it in a slightly different manner. The “church” has become a whipping post in American society. Mainstream media ignores or dismisses her as irrelevant and kooky, and social media regularly disparages her as backwards, corrupt, and anything but a righteous vessel.
One of the things that has always bothered me about church criticism is that it invariably manifests in one of two primary forms:
1. An ungodly culture doesn’t like hearing godly absolutes proclaimed, feels conviction but pretends what it feels is offense, all so it can call out the church of Jesus for being un-Jesus-like.
2. Someone who affiliates themselves with the church or professes to be a Christian does something sinister and evil. The ungodly culture then pounces, claiming such conduct is both typical of and permitted in church culture.
I will admit that I don’t lose a lot of sleep over the first. I know how the world treated Jesus and I do not expect the modern world to treat His church any better. But the second line of attack against the church annoys me as intellectually offensive and morally misguided.
The fact that sexual abuse, or any number of other sins, surfaces within a body of people professing devotion to Christ, that is entirely different than the church approving, applauding, or teaching that such behavior is permissible.
If you want to tell me that the church needs to get better at discipleship and helping its members walk closer with Jesus, you will get no argument from me. But any pretension that church rolls must be free of all imperfections for it to be considered a divinely established institution is absurd.
I question the efficacy of Greear’s point, even if I agree with the premise.
Bad theology that teaches people that, in the midst of an emotional high, they can merely raise their hand while everyone’s eyes are closed, and they are then a blood-bought saint, is extremely unhelpful. But since we are unable to know what is happening in a person’s heart, trying to determine the status of regeneration opens the door to the sin of judgmentalism that isn’t godly, and certainly would not help the church’s perception in the eyes of the world like Greear hopes.
Perhaps church discipline is the better reactive approach? Rather than potentially discouraging a true convert to the faith by holding them at arms-length until they have “proven” that they really are a Christian, it might be wiser to welcome them with open arms, disciple them, and if they bring dishonor and disgrace to the Lord, and remain unrepentant, expel them from the body. That seems to be the more biblical approach anyway.
Still, I share Greear’s frustration that Christ’s Church is consistently shackled with the weight of ungodly philosophies, unbiblical teaching, and corrupt instruction, simply because the person spreading the garbage claims Christianity.
For instance, Sojourners magazine may market itself as Christian, but there is nothing remotely Christian about this:
In the same way, Christian universities have hosted Dr. Christena Cleveland as a “Christian scholar” advocating racial reconciliation. You will not find Christ’s spirit of reconciliation anywhere near this bigoted nonsense:
Of course, I’m not foolish enough to believe that there aren’t others who would allege the things I espouse and stand for are far from Christian. So how do we discern who is right? I would submit not our feelings, not our creeds, not our traditions. Every single one of those things is untethered and unreliable. The only solution to defining Christianity and the morality of Christian conduct must come from God‘s word. Test every idea against its authority, keeping what is good, discarding what is not.
In the meantime, let’s stop hanging men’s sinful rebellion around the neck of Jesus and his bride.
ICYMI…
The big news this week was Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Some folks were really unhappy about it. I featured them in this video about the whole saga:
And I wrote these couple columns you should check out:
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Are you sure that 'membership' in a local church is a Biblical concept? And, if so, do you preach 'Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse,...' from Malachi 3:10 and consider the storehouse the local church? Or is it acceptable to directly support missions on your own?
just an observation and opinion (retired 17 years now so not so close to the institutions anymore) but I have been saying to anyone who will listen (and there ain't many) that if the preachers/pastors in the pulpit don't say some of that stuff n their sermons about what is happening culturally (and I haven't heard a peep from the pulpits explicitly about the Socialist culture and anti-Christian attitudes in four churches I have visited/worshipped within in the past four years) nothing is going to happen to change the "stupidity" of the American people...and I am convinced that most religious/church attendees are Biblically ignorant for that reason...no one speaks to the problem from the pulpit and therefore the pew -sitter never critically examines it from God's Word...I sometimes feel nauseaous watching/listening to the America I live in and wonder if God has abandoned America and will allow America to suffer the consequences...what I did with children as they were growing up....painful but necessary