Had lunch with Weilun today, and we talked abt finding acceptance in church.
I think its sad that very often church is the one place where christians find it the hardest to find acceptance. Being held up to a higher standard is in its own right something that isn't wrong - but this "yoke of Christ" has unfortunately gone from easy to being incredibly impossible. I think it was Gordon MacDonald who once said "The church is the only army who shoots its wounded."
He would know.
Having been at the wrong end of an adultrous affair, I shudder to imagine the hurt he felt in return, for the hurt that he caused.
I guess it would be overly harsh to totally put the blame on the church. After all, if your'e guilty of adultery, you'd better be prepared to face the music. Its just that very often the church isn't able to differentiate between discipline and condemnation. More often than not, the discipline that the church administers alienates rather than restores. The one put on the rack is the one who feels like he's less welcome than someone who isn't a brother in Christ. Somewhere along the way, we have lost the ability to love the person who sinned... our acceptance of that person becomes conditional, our fellowship suddenly becomes very awkward, and we seem to suddenly feel justified to impose our standards on that person - adding to the weight he already carries.
I guess its kind of sad when I think abt how many pple leave church each yr after being 'disciplined'.... and how the guilty remain so self-righteously oblivious to it. I know I've been guilty of it before, so I'm in no position to stand on a pedestal and cast the first stone. But I daresay at least I've leant a little more abt how much mercy we all seem to lack, in light of the mercy we all receive from God.
I guess we all need to revisit the notion that he who is forgiven little forgives little... if God can make me feel so forgiven, why is it that when I think I'm being forgiving towards someone, he still continues to feel the weight of my judgment upon him? Why does my forgiveness continue to ring of something that's conditional? Why is it that everytime I think abt it, I always think of what's wrong with him instead of the good that he has in him? Why is it that he feels more bound by the Law in how I treat him, as opposed to having found forgiveness and freedom in Christ?
Mm... ah well.
I wonder how many who left church have done so because of my inability to love...
WHO THE FUCK READS BLOGS?????
Just realised the number of views on my page. Absolutely bewildered by who out there still gets redirected to blogs. Surely no advertisers...
2 comments:
Again I dun know what to say... Except to hope;
Remember CS Lewis's quote in the Chrsitian Foundations class. Aye... he was somewhat alluding to what you have been feeling. Of course there are many shades to it.
Thats why our commandment is to 'love one another'. Not judge, much less condemn, though yes I tend to like to do so at times, at VERY RECENT times at that.
But yet neither are we called to blindly love and ignore/tolerate anything. We are to admonish (in love), we are to correct, discipline, train, in scripture.
And yet in this we somehow perhaps always become either too lenient or too condemning.
(weak laughter)
There are many lessons to learn for all of us in our journey. Some are easy for some, some are difficult... but we all have these lessons. It is hoped that the lessons are passed down from each generation so that we do not fall the same way, and let history repeats itself. But you know history...
So we hope. And to that hope we must cling. And that hope is strengthened by our knowledge of Him that does give us that hope.
He that loves us, loves us still- May He then have mercy on us all. May we learn and grow and pass that on, to those that have not. Or at least so we can help them through?
Love to chat more but I think I am running a fever.
I wonder how many of us, not at the end of needing acceptance, would really have considered extending that grace to people. i guess that's why we need to be broken before carrying another's burden- that's why He had to become one of us.
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