I have to admit that though I love being part of the Seventh-day Adventist movement, any just-out-of-the-box naivete that I used to have about the church has lost its sheen. The foundation of the church is Jesus, but the building blocks are people (1 Peter 2:4,5) and those are pretty fallible building blocks.
But it's strange how we want "the church" to be patient with believers, we want "them" to recognize that people aren't instantly perfected when they join our fellowship, but then we expect "the church" to be pretty close to perfect all the time. But isn't the church just people like us? --people struggling to be faithful, trying to find the middle line, pressing on toward the Kingdom but stumbling a bit along the way? If that's not the church, then what is?
5 comments:
Is it bad if I haven't graduated and my naivete has already lost it's sheen?
So where does the idea of corporate identity sit? How can a group of inadequate and stupid people make something that is suppose to be perfectish. One of the answers is "emergence." Consider the ant... Check out the radio lab called emergence. I'll email it to you.
Now it does not answer everything but it does have some implications for not being caught up in the error of each individual and more realizing the possibility of the corporate. The church is personal but it is also corporate.
I agree that in our swiftness to criticize and condemn "the church," we often criticize and condemn ourselves. (See James 4:11,12) Only we're not humble enough, or at least unbiased enough, to realize it. Also, for what it's worth, one time I was really struggling with seeing a lot of corruption in the church and I ran across Jeremiah 45, and it helped put things in perspective for me. Basically just that God knows how bad it is; we just need to be faithful and let Him work things out. That might sound over-simplified, but it would be really lame to leave a comment longer than your blog. But I might have just done that. :) Thanks for your thoughts though.
how do you keep your blogs so short and so potent?
I love when a member who never greets anyone complains that the church is cold. we are the church, if we want the church to be warmer we need to start greeting people. we love to sit as spectators and judge, but we are part of the solution and the problem.
Post a Comment
Comments? Tell me what you think.