For the sake of Christ people claiming to follow him have done some pretty horrendous stuff. The bloody Crusades were undertaken in His name supposedly to reclaim Jerusalem and Israel from the heathens. To protect His truth the Spanish Inquisition saw people wrongly accused, tortured and publicly murdered in garish spectacles. The Conquistadors seized land, brought disease, slaughter and subjugation to whole races of people with a priest in the lead to bring them to Christ before killing or enslaving them. The good Christian people of Salem Massachusetts hunted down women, drowning and burning them as witches. A church in Kansas protests at military funerals and threatened to protest at the funerals of those poor, innocent Amish children a couple of weeks ago. I sometimes wonder why Christ hasn't returned yet, if for nothing else than to take his name back from the megalomaniacs who have abused it for so long.
This particular rant is triggered by my anger at one such megalomaniac who is destroying a church in my old hometown and the school where my children grew up. It's not a new phenomenon that self-righteous, deeply wounded, viciously myopic men (and some women, I suppose) rise to power within the church...locally, nationally or internationally. It's not even news when these men launch a campaign to so dominate and dictate from a privileged place of leadership that they destroy good people and cripple or kill the ministries entrusted to them. I've seen it happen over and over again. All the while these people claim to be advancing truth, doctrinal purity and theological accuracy. This particular pastor once told me that when all the people in the seats on Sunday morning reached spiritual maturity they would agree with him! This man sweats arrogance and glows with hubris. And he claims to represent Christ.
Well, people aren't waiting around long enough to achieve spiritual maturity. They're leaving in droves. Choosing, instead, to transfer to other churches led by lesser people. Some, I'm sure, are simply dropping out altogether and questioning the validity of Christian faith itself. In the wake of this megalomaniac's self-righteous domination a once large and thriving church is collapsing around him. A beloved school with a rich history of sharing Jesus with the community struggled to open its doors this year. All the while he blithely clings to his version of truth ignoring completely the fact that he has led a once thriving congregation to the edge of extinction. He and his shrinking band of "true believers" are baffled, I'm sure, that so many people can't handle the truth.
This is just one story among thousands of people who claim to speak for Christ while inflicting incredible wounds to His body. These are the stories that break my heart. These are the people who inspire this blog and make me want to set out on a campaign to cleanse them from the church completely. It's in those moments that God reminds me vengeance is His. If I were to act on my retributional urges I would be no better than those I decry. To be honest, in my own megalomanical moments I think I have all the right answers for the church. In the end, I trust God is working out His plan in, through and in spite of all of us, including the pastors who are leading their churches into irrelevance and extinction. It's beyond my capacity to understand exactly how that works. For now I'm satisfied with telling the world when I see things in the church that I don't like.
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