Not My Church

It came up again on my social media. Another person who is no longer calling herself a Christian, who is leaving the Church, but who voices commitment to her relationship with Jesus, a relationship which matters deeply to her.

These types of posts are becoming more and more common on my feed, and usually I see a mixture of truth and lies as the catalyst for the decision. 

Both the lies and the truth are often rooted in a sense of justice. Whether people are leaving because of the Church not affirming a false gospel they have adopted or because the Church is standing against (or at the very least not displaying) God's justice, people are upset. But even where the cause is just and the anger is righteous, we often miss the lies that creep into this decision. 

I've seen people walk into a faith of isolation, I've seen people distance themselves from the Church, and of course, I've seen the Church fail time and time again, but I grieve when people leave because the Church is God's design for us. It's still affected by the brokenness of the world and the flesh, but it's His best for us. And though the ways we fail to display God lead so many people away, it's still His primary means for displaying His character and advancing His Kingdom in the world.

That can be frustrating.

It can be hard to see God's heart being corrupted in the people most meant to display Him. It's not wrong to address these sins, and I think part of people's frustration comes from trying to address them and people not listening and nothing changing. 

But here are some things I've noticed tend to happen when we decide to walk away. 

-We fail to acknowledge our own brokenness. 

We are rightly grieved and angered by the sin running rampant in the house of God, but in our righteous desire to distance ourselves from that sin, we distance ourselves from the people we see committing that sin and the culture we see perpetuating it. As we do, we fail to acknowledge our own brokenness. It becomes about what "they" are doing wrong. "They" don't look like Jesus, and we forget how often we don't look like Jesus too. A righteous cause doesn't exonerate us from our own imperfections, but when we focus on the failings of others and distance ourselves from those failings, we tend to put more weight and focus on their sins than on ours. Calling out sin is good, but we can't do it from a position of authority; we have to acknowledge our own sins, weaknesses, and corruptions of the gospel-driven life. We cannot stand independent of the brokenness of the church because we are a broken part of it. 

So often we leave the Church in arrogance, trusting our own righteousness, especially where our cause is genuinely right and good and in alignment with God's will. It's easy to label everyone pharisee and false teacher and treat them like serpents, allowing us to dismiss the gentleness and grace with which Jesus led the lost, misguided, and sin-ensnared to His truth. And none of that is without rebuke, challenge, and command, but even Christ, God's Son, perfect in every way, completely righteous in His every cause, never laid down His humility in His pursuit of goodness. How much more humility should we show in our interactions with others when we know that we are flawed and sinful and capable of being led astray? What good is being "right" if it is more about proving our own goodness than it is about saving those who are trapped in the lies of unrighteousness and pursuing God's design for us and the world?

-Brothers and sisters become our enemies. 

Satan loves to divide. And as much as he divides, he also loves to convince people that correction, challenge, and rebuke are divisions so that people are afraid to address sin, are beat down for bringing correction, or are burnt out when their calls to action fall on deaf ears. 

When we see sin persist in the Church, and when we see Christians comfortable in it, refusing to repent, to see, even to listen, our fight to be heard can shift to fighting against those who refuse to change. And yes, persistent, unconfessed sin, fruit that doesn't look like Jesus, and a lack of repentance and transformation are all signs that someone is not walking with Jesus, but often we're so focused on specific areas that we are too quick to dismiss faith. It's hard when we see these strongholds of sin in those who claim Jesus, but that doesn't mean everyone living within them is not really a Christian; we have to look at the pattern and fruit of their life holistically. But ultimately, whether we approach them as brother and sister or as unbeliever, people are not the enemy. Those actively working to bring disunity, injustice, and corruption are not our enemy. Sin is our enemy. Satan is our enemy. And when we forget this, we lose sight of the battle. We play into Satan's agenda instead of pursuing people out of it. 

None of that means we can't grieve the brokenness of the Body. God Himself grieves, and we can join in His cry, finding our solace in Him. We fight for truth, goodness, and righteousness because they are His heart for His Church and His desire for the world. Many of the reasons we want to stand against the Church are righteous, but we also have to know that God's call is not to stand against but to stand for. To fight for His Church. To invest in the Church He has given us, to love His Church, to identify with His Church and fight for its identity to be in and to reflect Christ. And that means fighting against sin, against oppression, against false teachers for the believers ensnared in them. 

That can be hard in our pride because we don't want to forgive and to fight for the freedom of those who have caused pain whether to ourselves or in our just cause. It's easier to be mad. It's easier to distance. It's easier to leave.

But what happens when our hearts become callous towards the Church?

We grieve the Holy Spirit by divorcing ourselves from the bride of Christ, from the Church He loves. The Church is His design and His intended. We cannot love Him and reject His bride. The Church is His means of moving in the world and His best for us. He has called us into fellowship. He has called us into this Body though it is still broken. It is His design, His good, His beloved. And we can not live in His fullness severed from the Body in which He made us to operate. He did not intend for us to be alone. 

When we separate from the Body, we separate ourselves from God's design. We diminish our effectiveness in our communities by losing what is gained in the unity of believers, which doesn't come easily but has to be contended for. And we lose the accountability and the sharpening of walking within a church home. So many leave the Church with confidence in their relationship with Jesus, and some even with a commitment to the Word of God, but when we walk alone, we become our own authority over Scripture. Even when our theology is strong, we all come with our own hermeneutic, our own biases, our own justifications. Walking in fellowship guards us against creating our own gospel from those.

That doesn't mean that everyone who falls into the "Jesus and me" or "God and my Bible" camps will end up walking away from their faith or becoming heretics of it, but it does mean that walking away removes us from the protections of fellowship and puts us in a dangerous place (as does standing under false teaching--to be clear. This is an advocacy for a broken Church, not a false church). And even if our theology and our faith stays secure, we miss out on the fullness of God's goodness by living in rebellion to His design for us as members of one Body, not independent (as our American theology lifts up) but interdependent. 

For those leaving in support of a false theology, this becomes even more dangerous. Because God's design matters, and when we reject it, it becomes easier to slowly distance more and more from what is true and just and pure and good. And the false gospel of the world will always be there to offer us a "better" way. To claim that it alone supports justice and goodness and love, touching on something real while feeding its followers a lie that only increases and desensitizes over time. When the Church has remained silent, the world always rises up to meet the cry of our hearts with the admonition that only its gospel can save.

Pain is at the forefront for so many who have left the Church; I don't want to be insensitive to that. God hates the pain that has been caused; He grieves the brokenness. In His grace and love He has walked with many through church jadedness, church hurt, church resentment, but His call is always back. Not back to the sin, the corruption, the toxicity that are rampant in so many churches but back to the Body. Because in all its brokenness, the Church is His.

The path to healing from the pain inflicted by churches will never be to walk alone. No church will be perfect but that doesn't mean no church will be healthy. It's a hard journey, but in the place of a healthy church we can not only heal but thrive as we pursue the health of the whole Church. 

The answer isn't to leave but to recommit. To find people who will fight with you. To lean on God. And to keep fighting with His strength and His vision, not settling for anything less than the righteousness to which He calls His beloved. And we will fall short time and time again, but the story isn't over and the victory is won.