Swap Blog

Messy Christian has a very honest and somewhat disturbing post about why she is now comfortable being a Pew Warmer. Give Messy’s Full Post a Read Here

Messy Christian has virtually walked away from any desire to be a committed Christian now, this has resulted because of how she felt within the church, and her struggles to find peace within the body. Personally, I do not agree with all of her decisions, but I also respect the fact that she had to make some calls to find some peace herself. I have felt some, if not all, of the things she talks about within the body. In the end though, I simply came to different conclusions then she did. I do hope long term she returns to a place where she wants to be committed to God and His work again, but honestly I can understand why she is where she is, as we have all been there as some point.

In the first line of this post, I said her post was disturbing because it is distubes / saddens me that the church can take someone that was once on fire for God, and actively doing His work, and via pain, neglect, and hurt make them happy to just become attendees. Sure the individual is responsible for the decisions they made, but many times the body does not help to make the decisions better, easier, or to make the “right” decisions more desirable due to the actions and reactions that occur within the body.

Now I am not saying that our feelings are always right, as they are not, or that the body of Christ is too demanding, or that strong leaders / leadership are wrong, or that everything within the church is bad, wrong, etc. Those things are simply not true, but the simply fact is that every Christian I know has been hurt worse by other Christians (regardless of their position within the body) then they ever have by those that are in the world. I have always contended that this is true because we, Christians, expect more, or at least something, from other Christians. Unfortunately, there are bad leaders, bad ministries, bad attendees, bad workers, etc throughout the body and at some point we ALL run into them and we are all hurt by them and they make us wonder why and what we are in the body.

Right or wrong the majority of the time, I do not think Christians have high expectations for those that do not ascribe to our faith. So, when we are failed by the worldly we are not surprised, shocked. When we are failed by our brothers / sisters then we are truly hurt. From those that call themselves Christians, Christ like, we expect something to be different in them and we expect them to treat people better then they do. I do not think that is unrealistic either, as those that follow Christ are suppose to be different then those that are in the world. I also know that I have hurt other Christians, and if you are a Christian and you are willing to be honest with yourself then you have hurt people too. That is part of being human and that fact makes it even harder when we compare ourselves, our actions, and our reactions to those of Christ. My real point is we need to remember just how much damage we Christians can do, and are doing, to others within the body when we hurt them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 at 8:52 am and is filed under Faith, Family, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.