Standards exist. There is an objective right and wrong, and even if we may not fully understand it or always get it correct, it still exists. Still, the church struggles to navigate this fine line between repeating and teaching moral righteousness and not simultaneously ostracizing the lost through judgement.
Navigating that obstacle is incredibly difficult. Our modern world seems to believe that if you are not willing to embrace the choices of a person that you are judging them inappropriately, and yet the church often struggles to separate the actions from the person.
I can hate the murder, while still loving the murderer. How much more should I be able to offer grace to those with lust, the glutton, the envious, or the sloth?
Let me tell you about a personal struggle. I once attended a church and the pastor of the church went on a rant occasionally about the evils of alcohol. Now, I’m not a teetotaler. I don’t besmirch those who choose to avoid alcohol in order to keep from tempting others or themselves, but in my reading of scripture, there is absolutely no prohibition on the consumption of alcohol. It made me think for a few minutes during his rant, that this conservative church I was attending where every member carried their bible with them into service, may not have ever read the scripture for themselves.
I haven’t made an exhaustive effort to study the matter. I haven’t cracked open my concordance to look up the meaning of drunkenness or wine to determine the minute facts of the scriptural take on it. All I know is that when Jesus turned water into wine, the man who tasted it was blown away that the best wine had been saved for later. The custom was for the best wine to go first and be followed by the lesser wines, likely because as the gathering had imbibed their share of the wine, they would be more inebriated and less likely to notice the lessening quality of the wine they continued to consume.
Perhaps I missed the mark on that one, but I think that unlikely.
What was most profound, was this pastor would rail against the consumption of alcohol and accentuate his message with his 2nd and 3rd chins. “Ya ought not be drinking alcohol!” he would exclaim with a shake of his finger sending ripples across his neck like water in a balloon.
The man was obese by definition. He didn’t share the same moral righteousness in his zeal against gluttony and the abuse that was to his body temple. You see, the sins of others were of the utmost priority, but his own struggles were kept behind the veil as far as he could hide them.
It has struck me now, years removed from attending that church, that what offended me most wasn’t that he struggled and tried to demean people for engaging in an activity that wasn’t sinful. It was that if someone who liked to have a glass of wine with dinner or maybe a couple when celebrating the marriage of a child or family member was to attend one of his services, they would likely be put off by the very idea of church. I think everyone who is a Christian in the true sense should be offended that a man like that gets to serve as a representative of Christ. There was no humility shared in his own struggles or love for those who had their sins made evident before him.
He was judgement manifest.
He was also a symptom of a problem and not necessarily the problem itself. He was a member of a bigger organization that held a denominational view that simply doesn’t jive with scripture.
As immature as I may sometimes be in my faith, I was fortunate enough to know that I could take what he said that was good, and assess what he said that I disagreed with. I could read scripture for myself if I thought his message was out of line. Most of the time, he was good. Occasionally, though, like on alcohol, he was downright terrible.
Churches everywhere do this, though. Most organizations composed of people arrogant enough to believe anything they decide with a small majority is filled with the spirit of God will struggle to find humility.
The vast majority of our denominational divisions are based on human pride either pushing people seeking to remain true to scripture to split off, or those who thought they knew better than scriptural purity to arrogantly chase their own cultish experience.
Now, admittedly, I have had only a very few interactions with the Catholic or Orthodox traditions. Still, the portrayal of crimes being perpetrated and covered up, or the history of selling indulgences and other collusion with government and violence wrought in the name of the churches would lead me to believe none of them are immune either.
It is the human condition, and yet, while we seem so willing to export our judgement on the world around us, we rarely take stock of our own faults.
I do believe that the Holy Spirit works in and around our churches. I also believe it is constantly in conflict with our flesh orientation and desire to believe ourselves better than the outside world. It is the reason that we think we have the right to wear God’s robes in the courtroom of moral righteousness. We don’t.
Our mission is to share the good news, be obedient to the teachings, teach right and wrong, and leave the hard part up to God.
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