A Question Demanding a Response

How would you define the word church?

shalom, matt

3 comments:

thebaysingerboy said...

the church now? or the church as it should be?

matt said...

The church now i suppose, but you could give both if you wanted too.

thebaysingerboy said...

Narrow-minded, self-absorbed, egotistical, divided, prideful and the worst part of it is that we claim to be all these things under the guise of Christendom. Sometimes we get so caught up in the legalism of the church that we forget what the real purpose of it is. We lose sight of the fact that we are called to love God and love people (including our enemies... WHAT?!?!) The church is supposed to build one another up; but a lot of times in trying to do so, we tear each other down. I think our culture is so entirely selfish that we forget that how important community is. We want it our way and we tend to be a bunch of big babies, when we don't get that. We place a lot of value on personal gain, as apposed to the well-being of the community. It’s sad to see the culture seep into the church in such a negative way. I think if we were more humble we wouldn’t be as stuck as we are. We can recite the creed and defend the orthodox all we want, but the fact remains that until we are humble and selfless enough to love unconditionally then we aren’t really following a man, we are following a set of rules, regulations, and rituals. If we really were humble and honest with ourselves, we would admit that we are indeed broken. We need to embrace the brokenness. It’s the whole idea of clay pot that needs to break in order to be molded into something else.

DISCLAIMER (a.k.a. how I save my own behind): I am in no way saying that all individuals, churches, etc. are like this. I do not think that at all. That would be completely narrow-minded of me. But this is the view I get of the American church as it is now. And there are a lot of great people and groups doing amazing things to change the way we do this whole "Christianity" thing.