In the recent past, I have had spontaneous "micro-debates" with random people about the Church, sound doctrine and the universality of religion. These discussions may not have been conclusive enough - to the point of deriving meaningful inferences - but I have (at least) come to understand a few things about how people interpret and understand religion and matters of Faith.
There is a certain conclusion though we all came to: that the Church is diverse in its approach to both evangelism and mode of worship; and although we are all this diverse, unity is not so much lacking as far as doctrine and sound Christian teaching is concerned.
Here below are some of my observations on the Church - of which I am part of;
We mutually wear a certain disguise called "pettiness"
A few weeks ago, we were presented with a controversial discussion on “the Church and Morality” - so to say - as was depicted in a certain poster outside a mega church in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
The poster is here below (courtesy of UlizaLinks);
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| "Blurred Lines" - A sermon series courtesy of Mavuno Church |
The discussion emanated into 2 weeks of funny internet memes and GIFs, and I am very sure that you either retweeted, commented on, or laughed at all those twerkusifu jokes.
But this was not funny, my friend. It was not.
These were serious issues in our society - issues affecting ALL young people - being tackled by the church... Just in a different way altogether...
Okay, I gave my two pence on what I felt (and still feel) about the Mavuno Poster (as it came to be known) and moved on. Some people hated me (“caught feelings”), some supported me, and it went on the way it did... And if you were to tell me right then - and even right now - that Mavuno Church was/is not addressing current challenges amongst young people, (saved or unsaved), I would/ I will drag you to the ground with it...
See, today, I have had a few Christians (including myself) complain about things they see in other Christians - things they think are just wrong. You know it, right? It is a common thing. It mostly has been due to “not liking how the other person is serving God” by claiming that they are not capitalizing on the “basic, major and fundamental parts of the Christian Faith”, or on how bad they are as compared to us.
Note: Differentiate between pettiness and differences in doctrine as in cases when we attack, speak against and refute false teachers, heresies and teachings. In this case, I am talking about our petty reactions towards other normal Christians.
I have been a victim of such accusations. People claim that because I am a leader in many capacities, there are things I should not talk about, and that there are things I should be silent about. Some of these things include; love relationships, politics, humor, commenting on certain TV Shows, current news, affairs and on secular music (although I don’t listen to secular music or have any of it on any of my gadgets).
All these critics claim that I should base my christian influence on teaching Scripture and being the blunt and stoic Christian they are. But in retaliation, I have always asked, “Are we here to only reach out to the saints or also to the unsaved? Is my service to God (including this blog) only meant for the "cherched" or also to the "uncherched”? Why do we like to spiritualize everything? Huh?
If I have to reach out to anyone at all, the tools I may use need to make sense both to the believer (in line with Scripture) and to the unbeliever (for them to gain an understanding of what Christianity is all about.)
People have different needs as far as general life is concerned; some just need encouragement, some need Scripture full time, some need humor, others need music; some seek for news while others are attracted to weirdness. End point? Christ should be preached. Christ should revealed. To all people.
Anyway, am I sinning by doing this, by using all tools available to me to reach out to as many people as possible? No. Okay, does Jesus Christ, my Lord, feel offended when I do it? No. So what? Why do we have to make the Gospel so unreachable and so hard to pursue and love? I love being saved. I love it. I cannot imagine myself without salvation. I want other people to love it through seeing me as I enjoy it. That is all I want - for all people to know the Jesus I know, relate with Him and thereafter come to love Him.
The Mavuno poster unveiled our pettiness - how we choose to react to issues without basing our view on Scripture but on how we feel. When did the Gospel become subject to how we feel and what we think (our opinions)?
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Jesus, in His time, used examples the people around him could relate with so that He would drive his message home. He wanted them to understand Him - to understand the message of the Kingdom in the easiest way possible. The Pharisees called it crazy, but God called it awesome. They called unorthodox, but the Father called it obedience. Note the difference.
The Apostle Paul had “a fight” with the Apostle Peter on this same issue in Galatians Chapter 2 (please read the whole chapter to get what I am saying) when Peter claimed that the Gospel was only to be preached in a certain way and only to the Jews. Paul on the other hand felt that the Gospel was to be preached by all means possible to both Jews and Gentiles. End point? God intervenes in Acts 10 by showing Peter that the Gospel was not limited to the Jews alone but that it was for the Gentiles too, thus justifying what Paul had earlier preached in Romans 9:15 (and what Peter had been knowing all along because it was written in the very Torah he ardently followed - Exodus 33:19 (ESV) “And he said, 'I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.'”and in Hosea 2:23 (ESV) “...and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”)
The argument between Paul and Peter presents to us what the modern church has become: petty. We have become like the Corinthian church which Paul wrangled with asking them in 1 Corinthians 3:4 (ESV), “For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human /petty?” (the word 'petty' is my own addition).
My observation is that the greatest opposition the church is facing today is not from the world but from within. We are fighting amongst ourselves more than we are fighting against sin and the many atrocities in the world. Our pettiness - not based on the Holy Scripture - is our spiritual backlog.
We are acting like the fella below that Jesus once talked about
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| You got a speck in your eye!! |
We should ask ourselves;
- Are they sinning? If not, why criticize them?
- Is what they are doing positively changing someone's life- both in the Church and in the world? If yes, why oppose them?
- Are they being guided by God in what they are doing? Are they glorifying God? Is the Spirit of God and His Word being involved? If yes, then why stand against ourselves?
If we were to read and understand the message in Romans Chapter 14, and read it over and over again with an open mind and allow God's Spirit to speak to us, our pettiness would become less and less by the day.
People make mistakes. People sin. You also sin and make mistakes. They need a break. We should give them some breathing space - because we expect the same of ourselves when we err.
Note: These two articles reveal and describe how good we are at being petty: “Why People Really Like Jesus More Than Christians” and “Why I Quit Church (and the Surprise That Brought Me Back)”
Baseless blame games
Then in some other contexts, I have met numerous people (both believers and unbelievers) complaining about Church leadership and how they are falling away from the Church because of leader so-and-so or pastor-so-and-so.
Wait. So people are refusing to be faithful to God on the account of others? Is one's life tagged within another's life? Is spirituality a matter of an individual of a society or of a group? Will I go to heaven because my pastor (or another person's pastor) or leader is going to heaven or on the account of my own life and commitment to God? Why do people blame pastors and/or church leaders for fallen saints or any other sins within a congregation or a given denomination? Are pastors or leaders supposed to be gods so that they may jump like saving angels at some sort of an alarm and save church members from willful sinning?
Okay. Would we blame Jesus Christ for Judas Iscariot’s eloping, greed and love for money? Or blame the apostle Paul for Giaus’s leaving or the apostle John for Deotrephes’s weird mannerisms? Were all these leaders “unspiritual”? that some few people around them fell back and went back into the world? Why then do we call our pastors and leaders "unspiritual" because of some other person's sinful life? Isn't obedience to God's Word an individual's responsibility?
Whenever we blame others and make them responsible for our failures (or other people's failures), we are just being self-righteous, mean, judgmental and self-ish. Leaders and pastors are part of the body of Christ just as we are. They are no better than us. They have just been given a higher office of responsibility as compared to us, but that does not make them immune to sin or to the devil's temptation(s). They experience burn-out and feel weak, exhausted, betrayed and run down just as we often do. We should stop blaming them for all the things we see happening in our congregation(s) and instead pray for/with them. There, we will be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.
I don't deny that some of them deliberately sin and that others advocate for evil and wicked deeds amongst their followers, but why not pray for them instead? Yeah, we should rebuke them and correct them, but why not pray for them after doing so?
The body of Christ should be able to heal itself through forgiveness, love and prayer; and not tear itself apart through ridicule, factions and slurring...
That's my opinion.
I close my case.
Wait for Part 3 in the near future.
Bonface Morris.
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