“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:22-24)
“If your brother or sister
sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If
they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along,
so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three
witnesses.’ If
they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to
listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. (Matthew: 18: 15-17)
“Our Father in
heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our
daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven
our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
For if you forgive
other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive
you. But if you do not forgive others their sins,
your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:9-14)
By this
everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:5)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor
and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you,5that you may be children of your
Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends
rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you
get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what
are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly
Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-38)
Jesus replied: “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as
yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew
22:37-39)
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For
in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you
use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in
your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? (Matthew
7:1-3)
Yesterday, someone posted a meme saying “People
don’t leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus.
People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much
that they can’t stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about
that and clearly isn’t.”
Since we are supposed to be people of the Word, I
want to provide what I believe Scripture has to say about it, and since the
claim was specifically about “the teachings of Jesus,” I want to do so using
only the teachings of Jesus, though the apostles Paul, John, and Peter speak to
the matter eloquently and consistently with Scripture. I’m not providing any names because the point
is not to attack a person (or an organization) but to address the ideas expressed.
But
let me first point out that this claim is not about what a specific
congregation or a specific pastor preaches or about leaving one congregation or
pastor to go to another. It is specifically about rejecting Christianity because
the person making the claim perceives Christianity to be an institution that
does not live up to “the teachings of Jesus.”
So,
let’s summarize the teachings above. We are to love the Lord our God with all
our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths. This is the number one thing and if we
do not do this, we may as well not bother with the rest. If we love God, we are
to obey Him. We are also to love our neighbor as ourselves, and even to love our
enemies. We are to forgive one another rather than to judge one another, and
when we do judge, we are supposed to be extremely careful that we are not even
more guilty of the sin than the person we are judging. We are also to follow a
specific procedure in our response to someone who is sinning.
Now,
the situation in question involves a Christian sharing a post in which someone condemns
all Christians who don’t happen to see everything precisely as one or the other
dictates that all Christians be. There is no room for grace. There is no room
for imperfection. There is no room for growth. There is no room for
forgiveness. There is not even any room for disagreements on lesser issues. And
if any portion of Christendom fails, the whole is condemned.
In
this, it is very like Critical Race Theory, which holds that if your skin is
considered “white” you are racist. You can not but be racist. No matter how hard
you try, you will still be racist because you can’t see things from the
perspective of someone who is not white, while those whose skin is not white
cannot be racist even though they cannot really see things from the white perspective
even if that is the predominant perspective. All whites and all Christians
(except those approved by the poster and the person who shared it) are demons
who must be rejected, and all non-whites and those who reject Christianity are
saints and prophets who speak the “word of God” which is to be obeyed without question.
As
an alternative to this, I suggest that our goal should be to live according to
the verses listed above and perhaps to see things more as Dallas Willard
describes them in Renovation of the Heart (p. 234)
“The
local groups of disciples, in the usual case, will certainly have people at all
stages of the journey. They can be compared to hospitals with people at various
stages of recovery and progress toward health.”
I submit
that bombing the hospital isn’t going to help the patients.
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