Where's the grace?
A recent discussion has got me struggling. It was an average conversation with a self proclaimed “spiritual but anti-organised religious person”. She shared her frustrations and the problems as she sees with the church and Christians. Her thoughts were nothing new but they hit hard. It was issues like hypocrisy in the church; the pain Christians have called with gossip and slander.
It reminded me of listening to dc talk’s Jesus Freak as a teen, "The greatest cause of atheism today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, but walk out the door and deny him with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable"
Her accusations were hard to swallow because they are true. It is the reality that she has met those how claim the name of Christian but not met the grace of Christ.
Comments
Even still, I think blaming the chuch is the easy way out, the hard part is changing it from within.
I know too many people, friends and close family, who have been hurt by people in the church. One such person commented "I will start going to church again when there aren't any 'Christians' there."
Here is the catch. We're in this together. We are the body of Christ and, as the body, we have a responsibility to take some discipline into our own hands. Confrontation of the problem occassional solves it, but it's not always easy.
It's time for us to step up and stop being so ignorant.