Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash
Hypocrisy. The world is full of it.
Yet, so indivisible from the world is the church that the church fights moral
wars on political issues with partiality and that is unworthy of the kingdom of
God. I speak here of individuals of the church, but also of the church as whole
entities.
On some issues should we care? Of
course, but it’s how we fight that
matters.
If there is anything we learn from
the four gospels it’s that the disciples were thick, daft, slow on the uptake,
morally forlorn, wretched to the heart; used in the biblical narrative to
reveal to us the horridness of the human condition. Never did they ‘get’ Jesus’
agenda, not even after three years with him.
The twelve reveal to us our
very own nature.
The single point I want to make is
this: the church and Christians more
ought to be asking God, ‘How on earth are
we getting heaven wrong?’ asking on the assumption that we are getting heaven wrong. But instead we’re
acting as if we’re right all the time. We are not!
The one duty of the Christian is to
live for God’s glory. The one prayer a Christian can make in striving to live
out this ideal is to pray in humility — “Lord, what am I not seeing?”
(There are things I’m not seeing even in writing this article — God, have mercy
on me.)
Jesus said, “… first take the log out of your own eye, and then
you will see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.”[1] When we live the truth of removing logs from
our own eye, we see that what the other person is dealing with is a speck as far as it’s relevant to us.
We more ought to understand just how much focus we ought to be giving to living
humbly amid our own sin.
As we act justly, love mercy and
walk humbly with our God,[2]
we pray as if God knew how far we personally fall short of his glory. And he does know. I just don’t understand
how mature Christians live as if they’re not in God’s constant view. I just don’t
understand how someone can think of themselves as ardent devotee of Jesus and
not live a continually repentant life. It’s beyond me. A repentant life is the
sign of regeneration in Jesus.
When we live in the light of the darkness
that enshrouds us, we accept our brokenness and predilection to sin, and we use
the humility that Christ gives us to serve others, living in the knowledge of
our brokenness, amid the knowledge of the grace that saves us.
Knowing we fall far short of the
glory of God means we grant ourselves the capacity of error.
We give ourselves permission to be
less-than-God.
It’s agreeing with God that God’s
ways and thoughts are higher than our ways and thoughts.
It’s claiming the low moral ground
instead of the moral high ground when, especially in this day of revelations of
church abuse, our shadow is showing. The world cannot stomach hypocrisy from
the church, yet the world has so polarised the church to the stain of
hypocrisy, that it is old news now. And the weird thing is the church is still
sleeping in some trance that it has influence in society. Nobody cares what the
church thinks anymore. You, Christian leader, who think people care about your ethical
wisdom; your soapbox in the public square rotted away some time ago. Use your
influence to serve God, not to push your one-sided agendas that you think is God’s own prerogative. How
ridiculous that you think you’ve got the market cornered regarding God’s
wisdom.
How can the church cherry-pick its
ethical issues? How is religious liberty any more important than responding to historical
sex abuse in the church? How can abortion be a higher issue than children
detained in refugee camps or climate change? How is it that people of other
faiths are treated like second-class citizens by many Christians? Why isn’t the
church at war with the pornography industry, family and domestic violence,
abuse within its own ranks, modern slavery and human trafficking, gendered and
racial injustices, poverty and inequity between the rich and the poor, and the tranche
of unchristian leadership and discipleship pedalled within the church by-and-large
these days?
We too often think our thinking
aligns with God’s will. How conceited is that?
How on earth can we conceive that
we’re on God’s side when there are portions of the other side of the debate
that can veritably hold the same line. It’s just like marriage counselling —
three ‘truths’ abide: his truth, her truth, the
truth! His perception of the truth is not 100 percent truth, nor is hers. It’s
only the truth that is 100 percent
truth.
Could it just be that in fighting
for an ethical position we are on earth and getting heaven wrong; that we are
tying or loosing on earth what was and never is in heaven?
Could it be that we might be
fighting the right fight but fighting it in the wrong way? Nuances are
important. Pride, for one heinous instance, blurs a good message and makes it
gross.
We only ever fight ‘for God’ when
it’s the right issue, fought in the right way, at the right time, for the right
reason, and in every aspect in a way that gives God glory. Anything that falls
short is sin.
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